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7 


H  O  E  V  E  R  possesses  or 
les  to  possess  more  than  he 
ds  .  .  .  more  than  a  house,  a 
den,  a  room  full  of  books... 
doomed  to  keeping  static  the 
er  in  which  he  lives. 

— Ludwig  Lewisohn 


<i-*<i 


^hilip  ^Durham 


/ 


THE  SHAKESPEARE  TITEE 


AN  IMPARTIAL  STUDY 


OF  THE 


SHAKESPEARE  TITLE 


\V^ITH  FACSIMILES 


joh:n^  h.  stotsexburg 


I,OTnSVILI,E,    KENTTTCKT 

J  O  H  X    P.    ]M  O  R  T  O  N     &     COMPANY 

19  0  4 


Copyrighted  by  JOHN  H.  STOTSENBURG 
1904 


DEDICATIOX. 

I  dedicate  this  book  to  the  author  of  the  "  Promus."     I 

know  her  through  her  works,  and  they  show  indubitably 

that   she   has   earnestly,   learnedly,   and   enthusiastically 

labored  to  expose  the  Shaksper  fraud,  and  that  to  her 

more  than  to  any  other  person  is  due  the  continuance 

of  a  literary  controversy  which  will,  sooner  or  later,  bring 

out  all  the  principal  facts  as  to  the  authorship  of  the 

Shakespeare  plays. 

John  H.  Stotsenburg. 


n^^i^'s 


PREFACE. 

I  have  undertaken  to  present  facts  to  show,  first,  that 
William  Shaksper,  of  Stratford-on-Avon,  did  not  write 
the  plays  and  poems  heretofore  attributed  to  him ;  second- 
ly, that  the  plays,  or  at  least  a  great  part  of  them,  were 
originally  composed  by  collaborators;  and  thirdly,  that 
they  in  part  or  in  whole  were  corrected,  revised,  and 
added  to  by  a  person  or  persons  other  than  William 
Shaksper. 

But  some  one  may  say,  ''A^Hiat  is  all  this  worth,  even 
if  proved?  If  you  displace  Shaksper,  of  what  importance 
really  is  it  to  the  world,  if  you  discover  or  aid  in  discover- 
ing the  man  or  men  who  should  be  rightfully  set  up  in 
his  place?"  If  it  were  merely  a  matter  of  fact  as  between 
a  false  and  a  true  claimant,  it  would  make  little  difference 
to  the  world  at  large;  but  the  true  author  or  authors  of 
the  magnificent  poems  and  plays,  now  going  under  Shak- 
sper's  name,  are  apparently  unknown  to  the  reading  public. 

There  is  therefore  a  grand  field  of  investigation  open 
to  the  student  of  English  literature. 

^Yhi\e  I  strive  to  give  facts  only,  and  not  conjectures, 
for  the  benefit  of  the  reader  so  that  he  can  form  his  own 
opinion,  based  upon  those  facts,  as  to  the  authorship, 
I  have  taken  the  liberty  to  give  my  own  opinion  also, 
especially  upon  collateral  matters,  such  for  instance  as 
letters,    poetical   allusions,    and   written   communications 


Vlll  PREFACE. 

which  have  been  misinterpreted  for  the  purpose  of  bolster- 
ing up  the  false  Shaksper  claim.  I  refer  especially  to 
Greene's  "  Groat's-worth  of  Wit,"  and  Daniel's  letter  to 
Egerton,  so  much  quoted  and  relied  upon  by  Shaksperites 
and,  as  I  remember,  not  generally  controverted  by  the 
Baconians.  As  to  the  "  Groat's-worth  of  Wit,"  an  able 
writer,  Edwin  Reed, in  his  book  entitled  ''Bacon  vs.  Shak- 
sper," issued  in  1897,  takes  the  correct  position,  and  he  is 
supported  by  Edward  James  Castle  in  his  "Shakespeare, 
Bacon,  Jonson,  and  Greene,"  published  in  the  same  year. 
I  must  give  credit  also  to  Fleay,  a  believer  in  the  Shaksper 
theory,  who  rejects  the  Malone  guess  as  to  the  Shake- 
scene  reference.  I  take  the  position  that  the  author  or 
authors  of  the  plays  can  be  found  without  the  aid  of 
ciphers,  and  that  no  author  can  go  beyond  his  stock  of 
words  and  phrases.  Every  man's  words  and  phrases  are 
limited  in  number — no  more,  no  less. 

I  have  maintained  in  this  book  that  the  key  to  the 
authorship,  or  at  least  to  the  discovery  of  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal authors,  will  be  found  in  the  elucidation  of  the  author- 
ship of  the  two  poems  respectively  called  Venus  and 
Adonis  and  Tarquin  and  Lucrece.  The  authorities  which 
I  rely  upon  are  such  as  can  not  be  disputed  by  Shaksper- 
ites; and  with  the  Shaksper  fiction  out  of  the  way,  the 
truth  as  to  the  real  authorship  will  sooner  or  later  reach 
and  convince  the  popular  mind.  Investigation  in  this 
field  marked  the  closing  years  of  the  last  century,  and  it 
is  going  on  impartially  and  carefully  in  the  early  years  of 
the  present  century.  Men  and  women  do  not  now  cling 
as  they  did  in  the  past  to  ancient  superstitions  and  false 
opinions  because  they  are  ancient  and  hoary  with  age. 
Veritas  est  magna  et  prwvalebit. 


PREFACE.  IX 

"Though  all  the  winds  of  doctrine  were  let  loose  to 
play  upon  the  earth,  so  truth  be  in  the  field,  we  do  inju- 
riously to  misdoubt  her  strength ;  let  her  and  falsehood 
grapple;  whoever  knew  truth  put  to  scorn  in  a  free 
and  open  encounter?"  So  spake  John  Milton  in  his  essay 
on  the  liberty  of  the  press. 

Somebody  recently  reproached  Prof.  Max  Muller  for 
wasting  his  time  on  mythology.  He  replied:  "All  I  can 
say  is  that  this  study  gives  me  intense  pleasure,  and  has 
been  a  real  joy  to  me,  all  my  life.  I  have  toiled  enough 
for  others;  may  I  not  in  the  evening  of  my  life  follow 
my  own  taste?" 

What  I  have  written  in  intervals  of  leisure  I  trust  has 
not  been  a  waste  of  time. 

John  H.  Stotsenburg. 


TABLE  or  COXTEXTS. 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     Doubts  Raised  as  to  Shaksper's  Ability  and  Learning  1 

II.     How  to  Reach  the  Truth  About  the  Plays  and  Poems  12 

III.  How  Plays  were  Written  in  Shaksper's  Time 27 

IV.  William  Shaksper  has  no  Place  in  Henslowe's  Diarj' .  39 
V.     Shaksper  Commended  no  Contemporary 48 

VI.     Shaksper  Left  no  Letters  and  Had  no  Librarj^ 55 

VII.     Shaksper  Gave  his  Children  no  Education 66 

VIII.     Shaksper's  Illiteracy  Made  Manifest  by  his  Chirog- 

raphy 73 

IX.     Shaksper's  Utter  Indifference  to  Literary  Proprieties  94 

X.     Spenser's  "  Pleasant  WiUy"  was  not  Shaksper 102 

XL     Daniel's  Letter  to  Egerton  does  not  Refer  to  Shaksper  109 

XII.     Shaksper  not  the  Shakescene  of  Robert  Greene 116 

XIII.     Lies  Fabricated  in  Aid  of  the  Shaksper  Pretension.  .  132 
XIV.     The  Conjectures  and  Guesses  which  make  up  the 

Shaksper  Biography 139 

XV.     Shaksper's  Real  Name  and  Traditional  Life 151 

XVI.     The  Plays  were  Written  by  a  Protestant  or  Protes- 
tants    160 

XVII.     Shaksper,  if  Learned,  Could   Not   have  Written  the 

Plays 174 

XVIII.     The  Learning  of  the  Author  or  Authors  of  the  Poems 

and  Plays 186 

XIX.     The  Diverse  Spellings  of  the  Name 192 

XX.     Floundering  in  the  Broad  Highway  of  the  Plays ....  204 

XXI.     The  Sonnets  do  not  Lead  to  the  True  Shakespeare.  .  212 

XXII.     Philisides  Wrote  the  Sonnets,  and  How  Identified  .  .  232 

XXIII.  The  Venus  and  Adonis  Test  Explained 252 

XXIV.  Venus  and  Adonis  Phrases  Repeated  in  the  Plays.  .  .  262 
XXV.     Francis  Bacon  Considered 284 


xu 


TABLE   OF   CONTENTS, 


CHAPTER  PAGB 

XXVI.     Thomas  Dekker  Considered 300 

XXVII.     Michael  Drayton  Considered 324 

XXVIII.     What  the  Dedications  Show 348 

XXIX.     Whither  the  Pathway  of  the  Poems  Leads 355 

XXX.     Troilus  and  Cressida  and  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew 

Examined 371 

XXXI.     Measure  for  Measure,  Titus  Andronicus,  and  Pericles 

Examined 386 

XXXII.     Richard  the  Second  and  Julius  Caesar  Examined ....  406 

XXXIII.  Henry  the   Sixth,  Parts  1,  2,  and  3,  Examined 422 

XXXIV.  Richard  the  Third  and  King  John  Examined 444 

XXXV.     Henry  the  Eighth  and  The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona 

Examined 452 

XXXVI.     The  Falstaff  Plays  and  the  Comedy  of  Errors  Con- 
sidered      461 

XXXVII.     Hamlet  and  The  Winter's  Tale  Considered 478 

XXXVIII.     The  Dramatic  Romance  of  Cymbeline 491 

XXXIX.     John  Webster  Found  in  the  Plays 503 

XL.     A  Short  Summing-up 510 


AX  IMPARTIAI.  STUDY 

OF  THE 

SHAKESPEAKE  TITLE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

DOUBTS  RAISED  AS  TO  SHAKSPER's  ABILITY  AND  LEARNING. 

''Come,  go  along  and  see  the  truth  hereof. '^ 

—Taming  of  the  Shrew,  iv,  5. 

THE  reading  public  will  probably  agree  with  me 
that  if  any  one  should  show  to  the  world  by 
convincing  proof,  and  beyond  doubt  or  cavil, 
that  some  one,  other  than  William  Shaksper,  the  son  of 
John  and  Mary  Shaksper,  was  the  author  of  the  plays 
and  poems  now  attributed  to  him,  they  would  never- 
theless be  always  called  and  known,  while  the  world 
lasts,  as  the  Shakespeare  plays  and  poems.  Like  the 
"  No-Name  Series  "  or  the  "  Waverley  Novels,"  they  would 
be  classified  in  literature  as  the  original  publishers  classi- 
fied them. 

How  then  would  the  literary  world  be  advantaged,  if 
it  could  be  clearly  shown  that  the  real  authorship  of  the 
Shakespeare  plays  and  poems  should  be  rightfully  ascribed 
to  one  man  or  to  several  collaborators,  other  than  Shaksper, 
who  have  been  hitherto  unhonored  and  unsung? 

I  answer  that  the  world  is  helped  when  a  wrong,  literary 
or  otherwise,  is  righted.  Honor  to  whom  honor  is  due. 
Whenever  the  scales  of  error  fall  from  the  eyes  of  the 


Z  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

literati,  the  beauties  of  the  great  wTiters,  dramatic  and 
poetical,  of  the  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  eras,  who  have 
been  hitherto  neglected  and  lost  sight  of,  will  be  sought 
out  and  appreciated.  "  Vixere  fortes  ante  Agamemnona 
multi;  sed  omnes  illacrimabiles  urguentur";  and  many 
good  writers  flourished  in  the  days  of  the  Eighth  Henry, 
Elizabeth  and  James,  who  are  now  scarcely  known,  or  if 
known  at  all,  are  not  properly  appreciated  by  the  student  of 
English  literature.  The  Elizabethan  era,  particularly,  was 
prolific  of  good  poets  and  dramatists,  and  if  the  real  facts 
as  to  the  authorship  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  could  be 
elicited,  the  student  of  English  literature  would  revel  in 
fresh  literary  fields  and  pastures  new.  Let  us  take  for  an 
illustration  the  jolly,  jail-environed  Thomas  Dekker,  of 
whom  \Miipple,  in  his " Literature  of  the  Age  of  Elizabeth" 
(alluding  to  a  scene  in  the  Virgin  Martyr),  says  that  "it 
is  difficult  to  understand  how  a  writer  capable  of  such 
refinements  as  these  should  have  left  no  drama  which 
is  a  part  of  the  classical  literature  of  his  country."  This 
great  poet  is  scarcely  known  by  the  readers  of  English 
poetry. 

And  there,  too,  for  illustration,  is  Anthony  Monday, 
whomMeres,in  his'Talladis  Tamia," eulogizes  as" our  best 
plotter"  in  comedy  and  tragedy,  and  who  was  a  great 
writer  of  good  plays ;  and  yet  his  name  is  almost  unknown 
in  the  history  of  English  literature. 

Not  long  ago  I  wrote  to  a  distinguished  official  of  Lin- 
coln Cathedral  to  learn  some  facts  as  to  the  poet,  Thomas 
Hey^vood,  who  was  born  in  Lincolnshire — a  man  whom  I 
regard  as  a  great  writer  and  prolific  dramatist  of  the 
Elizabethan  age,  and  whose  comedies  are  avowedly 
intended  to  be  pictures  of  contemporary  English  life,  and. 


shaksper's  ability  and  learning.  3 

to  my  surprise,  this  Lincolnshire  scholar  and  dignitary  of 
the  church  replied  that  he  had  never  heard  of  him. 

.  If  I  shall  write  very  radically  about  a  man  whose 
memory  we  have  mistakenly  revered  from  childhood,  it  is 
because  I  believe  as  Phillips  Brooks  did  as  to  the  state- 
ments of  the  early  fathers,  when  he  said  that  he  revered 
them  because  they  said  so  many  good  things  that  were 
true;  his  contention  was  not  that  what  they  said  was 
true,  because  they  were  the  fathers  of  the  Church,  but 
that  they  were  the  fathers  of  the  Church  because  what 
they  said  was  true.  He  reverenced  authority,  as  expressed 
to  him  in  an  official  statement,  but  he  always  asked, 
"Is  this  statement  true,  and  if  true,  can  it  be  verified? 
If  it  can  be  verified,  then  it  is  its  own  authority  and 
we  want  no  other.  Is  this  alleged  fact,  a  fact?  If  so, 
then  it  can  bid  the  world  defiance.  Any  number  of 
bishops  may  fulminate  against  it,  but  it  can  challenge 
the  whole  world." 

It  is  no  argument  against  Shaksper's  authorship  of  the 
poems  and  plays  that  he  was  poor  or  that  he  was  the  son 
of  poor  and  illiterate  parents,  or  that  his  occupation  in 
early  life  was  humble,  or  that  while  young  he  was  a 
poacher  or  deer-stealer,  or  that  he  married  a  woman  eight 
years  older  than  himself,  or  that  he  was  unkind  to  her, 
or  that  he  engaged  in  occasional  sprees,  or  that  he  was 
litigious  or  licentious.  A  poor  man,  a  bad  man,  a  drunkard 
or  a  debauchee  may  write  good  poetry.  If  Shaksper 
wrote  the  plays  and  poems  ascribed  to  him  with  all  these 
encumbering  faults  and  disadvantages,  he  is  entitled  to 
the  very  highest  meed  of  praise.  But  if  he  did  not  write 
them,  why  should  not  this  idol  be  pulled  down  and  broken 
to  pieces,  even  though  it  is  covered  with  the  gilding  of 


4  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

centuries  of  undeserved  praise?  Why  indeed,  unless,  as 
Dr.  Holmes  says,  we  like  to  worship  false  gods.  In  the 
following  lines  he  tells  us  the  exact  truth  about  the  mass 
of  mankind: 

"An  idol?    Man  was  born  to  worship  such. 
An  idol  is  the  image  of  his  thoughts; 
Sometimes  he  carves  it  out  of  gleaming  stone, 
And  sometimes  moulds  it  out  of  glittering  gold. 
Or  rounds  it  in  a  mighty  frescoed  dome, 
Or  lifts  it  heavenward  in  a  lofty  spire, 
Or  shapes  it  in  a  cunning  frame  of  words, 
Or  pays  his  priest  to  make  it,  day  by  day. 
For  sense  must  have  its  god  as  well  as  soul. 
The  time  is  racked  with  birthpangs.     Every  hour 
Brings  forth  some  gasping  truth;    and  truth  new  born 
Looks  a  misshapen  and  untimely  growth; 
The  terror  of  the  household  and  its  shame, 
A  monster  coiling  in  its  nurse's  lap 
That  some  would  strangle,  some  would  only  starve ; 
But  still  it  breathes,  and  passed  from  hand  to  hand, 
And  suckled  at  a  hundred  half  clad  breasts. 
Comes  slowly  to  its  stature  and  its  form ; 
Welcomed  by  all  that  curst  its  hour  of  birth. 
And  folded  in  the  same  encircling  arms 
That  cast  it  like  a  serpent  from  their  hold." 

Mortals  are  credulous;  and  legends  and  traditions, 
particularly  those  which  fabricate  miracles  which  never 
took  place,  or  which  create  heavenly  agents  who  never 
existed,  take  hold  of  men's  minds  with  great  power,  to 
the  exclusion  of  the  truth,  and  especially  so  when  the 
person  who  is  to  be  exalted  is  of  very  humble  origin. 

I  have  no  harsh  words  for  the  great  mass  of  the  Shaksper 
idolaters.     Having  neither  the  time  nor  the  desire  perhaps 


shaksper's  ability  and  learning.  5 

to  investigate  for  themselves,  they  rely  on  the  honesty  of 
the  Jaggard,  Blount,  Smithweeke,  and  Ashley  syndicate 
of  publishers,  supplemented  by  the  statements  of  Heminge 
and  Condell  and  the  superserviceable  encomiums  of  Ben 
Jonson,  supported  also  as  they  likewise  are  by  the  con- 
jectures and  guesses  of  Malone  and  his  blind  followers. 
As  to  these  idolaters,  I  apply  the  language  of  a  great 
writer  belonging  to  the  century  just  closed,  who  said,  with 
reference  to  this  idol  worship,  "The  negroes  in  the  service 
of  Mumbo  Jumbo  tattoo  and  drill  themselves  with  burning 
skewers  with  great  fortitude;  and  we  read  that  the 
priests  in  the  service  of  Baal  gashed  themselves  and  bled 
freely.  You,  who  can  smash  the  idols,  do  so  with  a  good 
courage;  but  do  not  be  too  fierce  with  the  idolaters, — 
they  worship  the  best  thing  they  know." 

And  so  I  say  to  the  searchers  after  the  truth,  whether 
they  are  known  as  anti-Shaksperites,  Baconians,  or  by 
any  other  name,  ''Be  sure  and  smash  the  idol,  Shaksper, 
if  you  can,  with  the  powerful  weapons  of  fact,  before  you 
attempt  to  set  up  any  poetical  divinity  in  his  place." 

The  first  writer  who,  without  intending  to  do  so, 
actually  cast  a  doubt  about  the  Shaksper  claim,  was 
Richard  Farmer,  who,  in  1767,  wrote  an  essay  on  the 
learning  of  Shakespeare.  He  said  in  his  preface:  "It  is 
indeed  strange  that  any  real  friends  of  our  immortal  poet 
should  be  still  willing  to  force  him  into  a  situation  which 
is  not  tenable;  treat  him  as  a  learned  man,  and  what 
shall  excuse  the  most  gross  violations  of  history,  chronol- 
ogy and  geography  ?  "  Thereupon  he  undertakes  to  prove 
that  Shaksper,  although  not  a  learned  man  nor  skilled  in 
languages,  was  able  to  borrow  from  translations  of  Greek 
and  Latin  authors. 


6  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

If  Dr.  Farmer  had  been  an  expert  in  chirography,  and 
if  his  attention  had  been  called  to  the  wretched  hand- 
writing of  Shaksper,  as  displayed  in  his  signature  to  his 
mortgage,  his  deed  and  last  will,  he  never  would  have 
attempted  to  show  that  a  man  with  little  or  rather  no 
learning  could  have  ever  used  books  containing  trans- 
lations into  English  from  the  dead  or  foreign  languages. 
It  may  be  said  in  this  connection  that  it  is  remarkable 
that  no  notice  whatever  had  been  taken  by  the  literary 
world  of  the  illiteracy  clearly  manifested  in  the  autographs 
of  Shaksper  until  William  Henry  Smith  of  London,  Eng- 
land, and  William  H.  Burr  of  Washington,  D.  C,  invited 
public  attention  to  it. 

The  next  writer  who  brought  in  plain  and  lucid  lan- 
guage before  the  world  the  question  of  the  right  of  William 
Shaksper  to  the  authorship  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  and 
poems,  was  Joseph  C.  Hart.  He  was  the  first  public 
disputer  and  denier  of  the  Shaksper  title. 

In  the  year  1848,  Harper  and  Brothers  published  a 
book  called  "The  Romance  of  Yachting,"  written,  as 
stated  therein,  by  Joseph  C.  Hart,  the  author  of  "Miriam 
Coffin,"  in  which  he  maintained  that  William  Shaksper  of 
Stratford-on-Avon  did  not  write  the  plays,  and  that  he  was 
merely  the  owner  of  all  the  properties  of  the  theatre  which 
included  the  plays  possessed  by  the  establishment,  and 
that  the  plays  were  written  by  poorly  paid  collaborators. 
I  have  not  been  able  to  find  a  copy  of  Hart's  book,  but  I 
give  an  extract  from  it,  transcribed  from  a  pamphlet 
issued  in  1888  and  written  by  General  J.  Watts  de  Peyster, 
entitled,  "Was  the  Shakespeare  after  all  a  Myth  ?  ": 

"Of  Shaksper's  youth,  we  know  nothing,  says  one 
commentator.     Of  Shaksper's  last  years,  we  know  abso- 


shaksper's  ability  and  learning.  7 

lutely  nothing,  says  another  commentator.  The  whole, 
however,  says  Chalmers,  commenting  upon  the  labored 
attempts  of  Rowe,  Malone  and  Steevens  to  follow  Shaksper 
in  his  career,  is  unsatisfactory.  Shaksper,  in  his  private 
character,  in  his  friendship,  in  his  amusements,  in  his 
closet,  in  his  family,  is  nowhere  before  us. 

''Yet,  notwithstanding  all  this  mystery  and  the  absence 
of  any  positive  information,  learned  and  voluminous  com- 
mentators and  biographers,  in  great  numbers,  have  been 
led  to  suppose  and  assert  a  thousand  things  in  regard  to 
Shaksper's  history,  pursuits  and  attainments,  which  can 
not  be  substantiated  by  a  particle  of  proof.  Among  these 
is  the  authorship  of  the  plays  grouped  under  his  name 
which  they  assume  as  his  for  a  certainty  and  beyond 
dispute.  This  egregious  folly  is  beginning  to  re-act  upon 
those  who  have  been  engaged  in  it,  and  some  of  them  are 
placed  in  a  very  ridiculous  position. 

"A  writer  in  Lardner's  Cabinet  Cyclopedia  undertakes 
to  give  us  the  history  of  his  family,  from  which  I  gather 
that  John  Shaksper,  the  father  of  William,  was  very  poor 
and  very  illiterate,  notwithstanding  what  the  ambitious 
commentators  may  say  to  the  contrary.  So  says  Lardner, 
and  he  proves  it  beyond  dispute.  The  coat  of  arms  and 
the  heraldry  obtained  for  the  family  afterwards,  was  pro- 
cured by  fraud,  and  was  pronounced  discreditable  to  the 
so-called  bard,  who  had  a  hand  in  it.  But  the  poverty  of 
the  family  is  nothing  in  this  case  except  to  show  that 
William  Shaksper  must  necessarily  have  been  an  unedu- 
cated boy.  He  grew  up  in  ignorance  and  viciousness  and 
became  a  common  poacher.  And  the  latter  title,  in 
literary  matters,  he  carried  to  his  grave.  He  was  not  the 
mate  of  the  literary  characters  of  the  day,  and  no  one  knew 


8  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

it  better  than  himself.  It  is  a  fraud  upon  the  world  to 
thrust  his  surreptitious  fame  upon  us.  He  had  none  that 
was  worthy  of  being  transmitted.  The  inquiry  will  be, 
Who  were  the  able  literary  men  who  wrote  the  dramas 
imputed  to  him?" 

In  commenting  on  Hart's  statement,  de  Peyster  aptly 
says:  "Conceding  that  Shaksper  was  a  miracle  of  intuitive 
force,  such  a  gift  would  not  have  conferred  knowledge  or 
science,  the  inevitable  result  of  studies  and  opportunities, 
which  latter  did  not  then  exist.  It  almost  seems  ridiculous 
to  talk  about  the  wTitings  of  any  man,  when  not  a  line  of 
his  has  come  down  to  us,  and  not  a  word,  except  his  ovm 
signature.  Is  it  a  matter  of  possibility  or  probability  that 
if  Shaksper  wrote  so  well  in  every  sense  of  the  word  and 
such  a  vast  amount,  that  no  manuscript  of  his,  good,  bad 
or  indifferent,  has  been  preserved,  when  the  writings  of  so 
man}^  men  of  far  lesser  note,  conceding  any  greatness  to 
Shaksper,  should  not  only  exist  but  abomid  ? 

''  In  the  works  reputed  to  Shaksper  are  thoughts  almost 
actually,  textuaUy  taken  from  Chaucer,  Sidney,  Lord  ^^ere 
(notably  the  gravedigger's  song  in  Hamlet),  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  (the  witches'  incantation  in  Macbeth),  Montaigne, 
Bacon,  Marlowe  and  others." 

If  any  writer,  devoid  of  bias  and  free  from  prejudice, 
possessed  of  sufficient  means  and  pleasant  manners,  with 
proper  introductions,  leisure  and  power  of  investigation 
and  analysis,  the  master  of  a  clear  and  agreeable  style, 
would  go  to  England  and  examine  every  source  of  infor- 
mation and  authority,  and  then  communicate  nothing  else 
but  facts  to  the  world,  then  indeed  those  interested  in  the 
subject  might  have  something  worthy  of  the  title  of  a 
biography  of  the  real  Shakespeare.     As  it  is,  the  actuality 


shaksper's  ability  and  learning.  9 

of  the  Shakespearean  story  holds  the  same  proportion  to 
legend  or  tradition,  sentiment,  gush,  probability  or  possi- 
bility, that  Falstaff's  half  penny  worth  of  bread  did  to  the 
two  gallons  of  sack,  the  capon  sauce  and  anchovies  after  a 
supper  costing  10  s  10  d,  which  led  Prince  Henry  to  exclaim, 
^*  0  monstrous !  but  one  half  penny  worth  of  bread  to  this 
intolerable  deal  of  sack." 

Following  Hart,  two  writers  entered  the  field  of  dis- 
cussion, each  claiming  that  Francis  Bacon  was  the  author 
of  the  plays. 

One  of  them,  William  Henry  Smith,  in  his  book  entitled 
"Bacon  and  Shakespeare,"  says  that  ''prior  to  the  year 
1611,  a  number  of  plays,  tragedies,  comedies,  and  his- 
tories, of  various  degrees  of  merit,  were  produced  of  which 
William  Shakespeare  was  reported  to  be  the  author,  and 
which  imdoubtedly  were,  in  some  way,  the  property  of  the 
company  of  actors  of  which  he  was  an  active  member. 
Not  one  single  manuscript  has  ever  been  found  to  identify 
Shaksper  as  the  author  of  these  productions;  nor  is  there, 
among  all  the  records  and  traditions  handed  down  to  us, 
any  statement  that  he  was  ever  seen  writing  or  producing 
a  manuscript;  nor  that  he  ever  claimed  as  his  own  any 
of  the  excellent,  or  repudiated  (as  unworthy  of  him)  any 
of  the  worthless  productions  presented  to  the  public  in 
his  name.  He  seems  at  no  time  to  have  had  any  personal 
or  peculiar  interest  in  them;  both  during  and  after  his 
life  they  seem  to  have  been  the  property  of  the  stage  and 
published  by  the  players,  doubtless  according  to  their 
notions  of  acceptability  with  the  visitants  of  the  theatre." 

The  other  writer,  Delia  Bacon,  claimed  that  the  plays 
were  imbued  with  the  letter  and  spirit  of  the  Baconian 
philosophy. 


10  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

After  these  came  Appleton  Morgan,  a  gifted  and  care- 
ful writer,  who,  in  his ''Shakespearean  Myth,"  has  sent  out 
a  pressing  summons  to  scholars  and  students  of  literature 
to  examine  disinterestedly  and  judicially  the  Shaksper 
claim.  His  work  is  an  attempt  (and  a  very  learned  and 
powerful  attempt)  to  examine  from  purely  external  evi- 
dence a  question  which,  dating  only  within  the  last 
twenty-five  years,  is  constantly  recurring  to  confront 
investigation  and  which,  like  Banquo's  shade,  seems  alto- 
gether indisposed  to  down. 

One  of  the  most  learned  doubters,  who  if  he  had  con- 
fined himself  to  the  discussion  of  the  single  issue  of  the 
validity  or  invalidity  of  the  Shaksper  claim,  would  have 
excited  an  immense  influence  upon  public  opinion  in  favor 
of  his  theory,  was  the  late  Ignatius  Donnelly.  His  argu- 
ment against  the  ability  of  William  Shaksper  to  write  the 
plays,  contained  in  the  first  part  of  his  work,  called  the 
Cryptogram,  is  very  powerful,  clear,  and  convincing. 

I  must  also  include  Richard  Grant  T\Tiite  in  the  list  of 
doubters,  for  although  he  was  an  advocate  for  Shaksper, 
yet  he  was  uncertain  and  unsettled  in  his  opinion.  \Mio 
but  a  doubter  could  have  "UTitten  the  following: 

"Unlike  Dante,  milike  Milton,  unlike  Goethe,  unlike 
the  great  poets  and  tragedians  of  Greece  and  Rome, 
Shakespeare  left  no  trace  upon  the  political  or  even  the 
social  life  of  his  era.  Of  his  eminent  countrymen,  Raleigh, 
Sidney,  Spenser,  Bacon,  Cecil,  Walsingham,  Coke,  Camden, 
Drake,  Hobbes,  Inigo  Jones,  Herbert  of  Cherbury,  Laud, 
Pym,  Hampden,  Selden,  Walton,  Wotton,  and  Donne  may 
be  properly  reckoned  as  his  contemporaries;  and  yet 
there  is  no  proof  whatever  that  he  was  personally 
known  to  either  of   these  men  or  to  any  others   of  less 


shaksper's  ability  and  learning.  11 

note  among  the  statesmen,  scholars,  soldiers  and  artists 
of  his  day." 

Such  a  statement  justifies  me  in  classing  White  among 
the  doubters. 

When  I  began  at  short  inter^^als  of  leisure  to  examine 
the  subject,  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  inquiry  logically 
divided  itself  into  two  heads;  the  first  being,  "  Did  Wil- 
liam Shaksper  write  the  plays  and  poems  attributed  to 
him?"  and  the  second  being,  "If  he  did  not,  who  did?" 
While  working  from  time  to  time  on  these  two  proposi- 
tions, I  discovered  that  William  H.  Edwards  of  Coalburgh, 
West  Virginia,  had  prepared  a  book  called  "  Shaksper  not 
Shakespeare,"  on  that  part  of  the  same  subject  which  is 
embraced  in  the  first  proposition  and  which  relates  to  the 
plays  only,  and  therefore  the  only  excuse  which  I  can  give 
to  the  public  for  any  attempt  to  throw  light  upon  the 
question  of  the  authorship  of  the  plays  and  poems  is  that 
I  have  broadened  the  scope  of  the  inquiry  so  as  to  embrace 
the  poems  and  have  treated  the  subject  in  a  different 
manner  from  that  followed  by  Mr.  Edwards  in  his  learned 
and  able  contribution. 


CHAPTER  II. 

HOW  TO  REACH  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  THE  PLAYS  AND  POEMS. 

''Nay,  it  is  ten  times  true;  for  truth  is  truth 
To  the  end  of  reckoning.^' 

—Measure  for  Measure,  v,  1. 

That  the  plays  were  called  the  Shakespeare  plays  raises 
a  slight  presumption  in  Shaksper's  favor.  It  is,  however, 
very  slight  indeed,  because,  first,  as  will  hereafter  be  dis- 
cussed and  shown,  the  name  used  was  not  Shaksper's 
name;  and  because,  secondly,  everybody  of  literary  taste 
knows  that  authors  and  poets  very  often  conceal  their 
names.  Some  of  the  best  pieces  of  prose  and  poetry, 
which,  if  the  authors  were  known,  would  have  immor- 
talized them,  are  anonymous  gems.  We  do  not  know,  so 
far  as  the  real  author's  statements  or  admissions  are  con- 
cerned, who  Junius  was.  When  Waverley  entranced  the 
men  and  women  of  England,  Sir  Walter  Scott  was  hiding 
behind  the  novel,  and  although  book  after  book  of  war 
and  love  and  knightly  prowess  came  to  the  thirsty  people 
as  refreshing  showers  come  to  the  parched  earth,  the 
glory  of  the  authorship  was  not  revealed;  and  the  real 
writer  was  not  the  one  whom  the  multitudes  or  the  know- 
ing critics  and  commentators  honored;  neither  would 
Scott  have  been  found  out  at  all,  had  not  the  bankruptcy 
of  his  publishers  compelled  him  to  step  before  the  curtain. 
Scott's  reasons  may  seem  peculiar  to  some,  and  yet  they 
were  rational  enough.  He  says  in  his  general  preface: 
"Great  anxiety  was  expressed  to  know  the  name  of  the 
author,  but  on  this  no  authentic  information  could  be 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  THE  PLAYS  AND  POEMS.      13 

obtained.  My  original  motive  for  publishing  the  work 
anonymously  was  the  consciousness  that  it  was  an  experi- 
ment on  the  public  taste  which  might  very  probably  fail," 
and  again  he  says,  ''I  am  sorry  I  can  give  little  satisfac- 
tion to  the  queries  on  this  subject.  I  have  already  stated 
elsewhere  that  I  can  render  little  better  reason  for  choosing 
to  remain  anonymous  than  by  saying,  with  Shylock,  that 
such  was  my  humor.  Another  advantage  was  connected 
with  the  secrecy  which  I  observed.  I  could  appear  or 
retreat  from  the  stage  at  pleasure.  In  my  own  person 
also  as  a  successful  author  in  another  department  of 
literature  I  might  have  been  charged  with  too  frequent 
intrusions  on  the  public  patience;  but  the  author  of 
Waverley  was  in  this  respect  as  impassable  to  the  critic 
as  the  ghost  of  Hamlet  to  the  partisan  of  Marcellus." 

I  have  said  that  a  poor  man,  a  bad  man,  a  drunkard, 
or  a  debauchee  may  write  good  poetry,  and  a  man  who 
has  not  very  much  learning  may  likewise  do  so.  Robert 
Burns,  one  of  Britain's  greatest  poets,  was  not  a  scholar 
versed  in  the  classics,  and  he  could  write  of  pretty  maids, 
banks  and  braes,  fireside  scenes  and  simple,  homely, 
heart-touching  things,  but  he  could  not  write  of  the  great 
men  and  women,  states  and  cities  of  antiquity,  nor  of  the 
heroes  and  gods  of  mythology.  They  were  strangers  to 
him.  John  Bunyan  was  no  great  scholar,  yet  he  pro- 
duced a  book  which,  without  any  trace  of  great  learning 
therein,  contains  a  display  of  the  imaginative  faculty  so 
bewitching  as  to  draw  all  scholarly  men  and  women  to 
the  "  Pilgrim's  Progress"  as  a  model  of  simplicity  and  clear- 
ness. Learning  may  be  piled  on  genius  and  it  will  make 
the  recipient  a  king,  aye  every  inch  a  king;  but  learning 
can  not  be  extracted  out  of  genius  by  any  human  process; 


14  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

and  as  for  the  supernatural  in  aid  of  a  poet  or  historian 
or  novelist,  nothing  very  reliable  can  be  expected  from 
the  ghosts  of  the  departed. 

The  learned  author  of  a  book  lately  issued  from  the 
London  press,  entitled  "Is  it  Shakespeare?"  very  aptly 
says  as  to  genius,  at  page  126:  "Genius  can  do  much,  but 
it  is  far  from  being  able  to  make  a  man  omnibus  numeris 
absolutus  or  '  complete '  in  the  sense  that  Shakespeare  was. 
Genius  alone  can  undoubtedly  lift  a  man  to  a  purer  and 
a  larger  aether  than  ordinary  mortals  can  breathe  in.  In- 
stances are  numerous  enough  in  the  annals  of  many  a 
cottage  home  and  lowly  birthplace,  but  these  self-same 
favored  mortals,  even  if,  as  with  Milton,  they  could  hope 
to  soar 

'Above  the  flight  of  Pegasean  wing,' 

still  would  find  that  their  wings  of  genius  are  sadly  clipped, 
confined,  and  weakened  unless  they  are  taught  to  rise  and 
fly  by  the  knowledge  that  is  in  books  and  by  the  varied 
wisdom  that  has  descended  from  the  ages  of  the  past. 
Without  these  helps  they  may  indeed  rise  somewhat  from 
the  brute  earth  of  ordinary  humanity,  but  they  will  never 
be  able  to  make  those  glorious  circling  swoops  in  the  lofty 
circumambient  air  which  are  ever  the  wonder  of  the  earth- 
bound  crowd  below,  the  marvel  of  an  admiring  world." 

The  writers  whose  works  will  show  a  knowledge,  gram- 
matically set  forth,  of  theology,  history,  medicine,  geology, 
botany,  philosophy,  finance,  or  the  languages,  or  all  of 
them,  must  have  been  students.  Spenser,  Sidney,  Mar- 
lowe, Milton,  Dryden,  Pope,  Cowper,  Byron,  Wordsworth, 
Southey,  Campbell,  Scott,  and  Tennyson  were  all  trained 
and  educated  men. 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  THE  PLAYS  AND  POEMS.      15 

King  Henry  describes  the  complete  man  when,  in 
Henry  VIII,  Act  1,  Scene  2,  he  says  of  Buckingham: 

"The  gentleman  is  learned,  and  a  most  rare  speaker; 
To  nature  none  more  bound;  his  training  such, 
That  he  may  furnish  and  instruct  great  teachers. 
And  never  seek  for  aid  out  of  hmiself." 

One  of  the  best  definitions  of  a  poet  is  given  by  Thomas 
Dekker  in  his  "  Satiro-mastix  " : "  True  poets  are  with  art  and 
nature  cro-wTied."  No  one,  I  take  it,  but  a  scholar  or 
coterie  of  scholars  could  have  written  the  Shakespeare 
poems  and  plays. 

Did  William  Shaksper  write  them?  If  not,  who  did? 
I  think  that  every  student  and  admirer  of  the  plays  and 
poems  will  agree  with  me  that  the  proper  way  to  arrive 
at  the  truth  is,  first  of  all,  to  discuss  and  settle  the  ques- 
tion of  Shaksper's  right  to  the  authorship,  without  refer- 
ence to  the  claims  set  up  for  any  one  else;  and  when  it 
has  been  fairly  shown  to  the  world  beyond  a  reasonable 
doubt  that  William  Shaksper  could  not  have  written  the 
works  for  which  he  has  so  long  received  credit,  the  other 
question  as  to  who  wrote  them  can  be  better  and  more 
easily  solved. 

I  do  not  expect  to  please,  persuade,  or  convince  the 
prejudiced  reader  by  my  attempt  to  remove  the  idol, 
Shaksper,  from  his  immerited  throne.  As  Hawthorne 
beautifully  expressed  it,  the  first  feeling  of  every  reader 
must  be  one  of  absolute  repugnance  toward  the  person 
who  seeks  to  tear  out  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  heart  the  name 
which  for  ages  it  has  held  dearest,  and  to  substitute 
another  name  or  names  to  which  the  settled  belief  of  the 
world  has  long  assigned  a  very  different  position.     The 


16  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Bible,  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  and  the  plays  of 
Shakespeare  so  called,  hold  the  first  place  in  the  affections 
of  the  English-speaking  people;  and  although  it  is  one 
thing  to  love  a  book  and  quite  another  to  question  its 
authorship,  the  multitude  will  not  appreciate  the  dis- 
tinction. 

Another  learned  writer,  who  has  thoroughly  exposed 
the  Shaksper  fraud,  expressed  the  common  feeling  when 
he  wrote  that  "  if  an  archangel  from  the  Empyrean  should 
write  a  book  doubting  the  complete  Shakespearean  pro- 
duction of  the  Shakespeare  plays,  the  book  reviewers 
(and  they  are  the  best  that  money  will  secure)  would  say 
to  a  man  that  that  archangel  was  a  dolt  and  an  idiot  or 
at  least  ignorant,  misguided,  and  beyond  his  depth." 

When  Paul  stood  in  the  midst  of  Mars  Hill  before  the 
Epicureans  and  Stoics,  and  boldly  proclaimed  the  God 
who  was  unknown  to  the  Athenians,  and  the  doctrine  of 
the  resurrection  of  the  dead,  some  mocked  and  all  dis- 
believed, except  the  woman  Damaris  and  a  few  others. 
Paul,  in  his  bold  and  resolute  way,  ran  counter  to  the 
received  and  fashionable  belief.  But  Damaris  has  many 
sympathizers  with  her  now,  and  the  Christian  minister 
can  say  with  Hamlet,  of  those  learned  philosophers, 
"Where  be  your  gibes  now?"  Reformers  and  iconoclasts 
are  cranks  and  maniacs  m  the  eyes  of  conservatives  and 
aristocrats.  Much  learning  has  made  them  mad.  Men 
and  women  must  not  run  counter  to  cherished  dogmas. 
Nevertheless,  the  truth  is  not  made  by  majorities.  If 
that  were  so,  Mohammed  or  Buddha  might  be  the  true 
Savior  and  Jesus  an  impostor.  Universality  of  belief  even 
does  not  consecrate  a  lie.  If  it  did,  our  writers,  teachers, 
and  parents  would  restore  to  his  lost  place  in  history  that 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  THE  PLAYS  AND  POEMS.      17 

other  adored  William — the  archer  patriot,  so  sweet  to  our 
boyhood  days — that  brave  William  Tell,  who  seemed 
once  to  be  as  firmly  fixed  in  history  as  the  snow-clad 
Alps  and  as  immortal  as  the  spirit  of  liberty  that  dwells 
among  them.  But  alas!  William  Tell  was  a  fraud  and  a 
lie.  If  it  did,  Pope  Joan  would  be  restored  to  the  list  of 
Roman  pontiffs,  and  the  Protestant  Reformation  would 
not  have  wiped  out  a  lie  once  so  generally  believed.  Yes, 
if  it  did,  the  reader  and  I,  if  then  living,  would  have  been 
educated  to  fraternize  with  the  Inquisition  and  would 
have  thought  it  no  crime  to  force  Galileo  on  his  knees  to 
renounce  the  sublime  truths  of  his  scientific  creed. 

Many  persons,  without  special  examination,  accept 
William  Shaksper  as  the  author  of  the  plays  and  poems 
upon  the  belief  that  he  was  different  from  all  other  men 
in  that  he  possessed  supernatural  powers;  that,  without 
education,  application  to  study  and  training,  he,  William 
Shaksper,  was  gifted  with  the  faculty  of  knowing  intui- 
tively everything  worth  knowing  in  literature,  history, 
science,  and  art,  through  the  intervention  of  some  super- 
human or  divine  authority.  There  is  an  instance  recorded 
in  Holy  Writ  of  the  very  natural  surprise  of  the  Jews, 
when  the  Carpenter's  Son  went  into  the  temple  and  taught 
the  people,  causing  them  to  exclaim,  ''  How  knoweth  this 
man  letters,  having  never  learned?"  On  that  occasion 
the  Jews,  not  recognizing  the  God-man,  expressed  the 
true  view  as  to  a  mere  man;  but  there  is  no  instance  in 
the  history  of  the  world  where  a  man,  without  learning 
and  barely  able  to  write  his  name,  was  proficient  in  the 
arts  and  sciences  and  in  the  knowledge  of  those  governing 
principles  in  nature  and  man's  relation  to  his  fellow  man 
which  can  only  be  acquired  by  careful  and  persistent  study. 


18  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

If  to-day  in  any  of  our  Courts  of  Justice  the  question 
should  arise  as  to  the  ability  of  a  man  named  WUliam 
Shaksper  to  write  thousands  upon  thousands  of  pages  of 
manuscript  such  as  only  a  learned  man  can  write,  and  a 
sample  of  his  handwriting,  made  at  the  age  of  forty  years, 
was  produced  for  examination,  the  facsmiile  thereof, 
taken  from  Malone's  "Inquiry,"  a  Shaksperite  authority, 
being  as  set  out  at  the  end  of  this  sentence,  any  unpreju- 
diced judge  or  jury  of  experts  would  pronounce  the  signa- 
ture that  of  a  very  illiterate  man. 


An  experienced  and  well-read  lawyer  would  put  on  his 
spectacles,  and  after  carefully  examining  the  writing 
would  address  the  court  as  follows  :  ''  Your  Honor,  this 
facsimile  at  first  reminded  me  of  what  the  Scottish  advo- 
cate, Paulus  Pleydell,  said  to  Guy  Mannering  when  the 
note  from  Meg  Merrilies  was  put  into  his  hands  for  exami- 
nation, '  A  vile,  miserable  scrawl  indeed,  and  the  letters  are 
uncial  or  semiuncial,  as  somebody  calls  your  large  text 
hand,  and  in  size  and  perpendicularity  resemble  the  ribs 
of  a  roasted  pig';  but  upon  consideration  I  am  inclined 
to  the  opinion  that  I  can  more  truthfully  apply  to  this 
wretched  writing  what  Dickens  said  of  the  note  received 
by  Mrs.  Tibbs  from  Mrs.  Bloss,  'The  writing  looks  like  a 
skein  of  thread  in  a  tangle.'  It  surely  shows  that  Shaksper 
was  an  illiterate  fellow." 

The  doctor  of  divinity  or  of  medicine,  examining  that 
signature,  would  say,  "I  must  admit  that  this  specimen 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  THE  PLAYS  AXD  POEMS.      19 

of  handwriting  strongly  militates  against  the  claim  for 
Shaksper.  The  letters  of  the  surname  are  so  far  apart 
and  so  badly  formed  that  they  show  that  the  writer  was 
very  illiterate  and  unaccustomed  to  writing.  If  what 
you  have  shown  me  is  a  facsimile  of  Shaksper's  hand- 
writing, he  was  not  scholar  enough  to  write  a  play  of  any 
kind  and  the  world  has  been  imposed  upon." 

A  school  teacher  or  college  professor  would  say,  ''That 
is  the  signature  of  a  man  whose  education  has  been  grossly 
neglected.  The  person  whose  handwriting  is  now  shown 
to  me  can  barely  write  his  name." 

A  business  man  would  say,  "I  do  not  want  that  man 
as  my  clerk  or  bookkeeper  or  sales  agent.  His  signature 
shows  clearly  to  me  that  he  lacks  education  and  learning." 

An  editor  and  newspaper  reporter  would  say,  "The 
fellow  who  made  that  signature  is  not  fit  for  article  writing 
or  reporting.  He  is  evidently  an  ignoramus,  though  he 
may  be  smart  enough  in  driving  bargains  and  money 
making.  The  man  who  can  not  write  his  name  at  all,  or 
who  can  write  it  with  difficulty,  may  be  able  to  gather  in 
the  shekels,  but  he  is  not  fit  for  newspaper  reporting,  essay 
writing,  or  editorials." 

A  county  clerk,  if  called  upon  to  give  his  opinion, 
would  say,  ''As  the  clerk  of  the  courts  of  my  county,  I 
have  for  several  years,  both  in  open  court  and  in  my 
office,  witnessed  the  operation  of  affixing  their  signatures  to 
documents  by  litigants  or  witnesses,  both  men  and  women. 
\Vlien  the}^  are  putting  their  names  to  affidavits,  deeds, 
mortgages,  or  other  papers  or  instruments  required  to  be 
signed,  I  have  noticed  that  those  who  can  hardly  write 
their  names  take  a  great  deal  of  time  about  the  transac- 
tion, working  at  the  formation  of  the  letters  as  if  it  were 


20  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

a  painful  and  laborious  task.  Speaking  from  the  stand- 
point of  my  experience  as  clerk,  I  would  say  that  the 
man  who  wTote  the  original  of  the  facsimile  now  sho^vTi 
to  me  labored  very  much  over  the  makmg  of  the  signa- 
ture, and  it  was  all  that  he  could  do  to  write  his  name. 
He  did  not  even  know  how  to  form  the  letters  of  his 
surname.  I  should  regard  him  as  having  been  an  un- 
learned man." 

Indeed,  I  would  be  willing  to  submit  the  whole  question 
of  authorship  to  a  jury  composed  of  all  the  living  leading 
writers  in  behalf  of  the  Shaksper  of  Stratford-on-Avon, 
not  omitting  Mr.  Sidney  Lee,  Mr.  Hamilton  Mabie,  and 
Mr.  James  Walter,  on  condition  that  all  other  questions 
are  to  be  eliminated  and  that  they  are  to  give  their  ver- 
dict upon  the  single  issue  of  the  ability  of  the  man  who 
wrote  the  signatures  to  the  deed,  mortgage,  and  will  to 
write  the  thirty-seven  plays,  called  the  Shakespeare  plays, 
containing  over  twenty-one  thousand  words.  I  feel  sure 
that,  divesting  themselves  of  prejudice,  after  inspecting 
the  signatures  and  listening  to  the  testimony  of  disinter- 
ested experts  in  handwTiting,  and  after  hearing  the  argu- 
ments of  learned  advocates  who  have  studied  the  hand- 
writing, such  for  instance  as  William  H.  Burr  and  William 
H.  Edwards,  their  unanimous  verdict  would  be  against 
the  title  of  the  man  who  made  those  signatures.  This 
important  matter  of  Shaksper's  handwriting  will  be  con- 
sidered more  at  length  in  a  subsequent  chapter. 

I  will  cite  here  some  unassailable  and  imimpeachable 
authorities  in  support  of  my  position  that  learning  is 
acquired  by  study  and  not  by  inspiration,  and  I  guarantee 
that  the  unprejudiced  reader  will  agree  with  me  that  the 
following  authorities  are  more  reliable  than  the  dicta  of 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  THE  PLAYS  AND  POEMS.     21 

all  the  guessing  Shakespearean  commentators  from  Malone 
to  Mabie: 

"  0  thou  monster  Ignorance,  how  deformed  dost  thou 
look! 
Su-,  he  hath  never  fed  of  the  damties  that  are  bred  in 
a  book." 

—Love's  Labor's  Lost,  iv,  2,  24. 

"  Ignorance  is  the  curse  of  God, 
Knowledge  the  wing  wherewith  we  fly  to  heaven." 

—Second  Henry  VI,  iv,  7,  78. 

"The  common  curse  of  mankind,  folly  and  ignorance." 

— Tro.  and  Cressida,  ii,  3,  31. 

"  My  years  are  young, 
And  fitter  is  my  study  and  my  books." 

—First  Henry  VI,  v,  1,  22. 

"  Study  is  like  the  heaven's  glorious  sun. 
That  will  not  be  deep-searched  with  saucy  looks." 

— Love's  Labor's  Lost,  i,  ],  84. 

"He  was  a  scholar,  and  a  ripe  and  good  one." 

—Henry  VIII,  iv,  2,  58. 

"My  father  charged  you  in  his  will  to  give  me  good 
education; 
You  have  trained  me  like  a  peasant." 

—As  You  Like  It,  i,  1,  71. 

"To  you  I  am  boimd  for  life  and  education." 

—Othello,  i,  3,  182. 

"  She  in  beauty,  education,  blood, 
Holds  hand  with  any  princess  of  the  world." 

—King  John,  ii,  1,  493. 

"I  have  those  hopes  of  her  good  that  her  education 
promises." 

—All's  Well,  i,  1,46. 


22  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

"My  library  was  dukedom  large  enough." 

—Tempest,  i,  2, 109. 

"  Schoolmasters  will  I  keep  within  my  house, 
Fit  to  instruct  her  youth." 

—Taming  of  the  Shrew,  i,  1,  95. 

"His  training  such, 
That  he  may  furnish  and  instruct  great  teachers." 

—Henry  Vm,  i,  2,  n2. 

"Well,  God  give  them  wisdom  that  have  it;  and  those 
that  are  fools, 
Let  them  use  their  talents." 

—Twelfth  Night,  i,  5, 14. 

"  Even  so  our  houses  and  ourselves  and  children 
Have  lost,  or  do  not  learn  for  want  of  time, 
The  sciences  that  should  become  our  country." 

—Henry  V,  v,  2,  56. 

"  I  will  be  very  kind,  and  liberal 
To  mine  own  children  in  good  bringing  up." 

.    —Taming  of  the  Shrew,  i,  1,  96. 

"My  brother  Jaques  he  keeps  at  school,  and  report 
speaks  goldenly  of  his  profit:  for  my  part,  he  keepsfme 
rustically  at  home." 

•  —As  You  Like  It,  i,  1,  6. 

"Thou  hast  most  traitorously  corrupted  the  youth  of 
the  realm  in  erecting  a  grammar  school." 

—Second  Henry  VI,  iv,  7,  37. 

Passing  from  the  authority  of  the  writers  of  the  plays, 
which  no  one  of  the  Shakespearean  commentators  can 
successfully  impeach,  I  cite  the  opinions  of  the  most  cele- 
brated writers: 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  THE  PLAYS  AND  POEMS.      23 

"  The  mind  is  the  man  and  the  knowledge  of  the  mind. 
A  man  is  but  what  he  knoweth." 

—Bacon,  vol.  ii,  p.  123. 

"  The  mind  of  man  is  this  world's  true  dimension, 
And  knowledge  is  the  measure  of  the  mind." 

— Lord  Brooke. 

"  By  knowledge,  we  do  learn  ourselves  to  know, 
And  what  to  man,  and  what  to  God  we  owe." 

— Spenser, 

"Arts  and  sciences  are  not  cast  in  a  mould,  but  are 
formed  and  perfected  by  degrees,  by  often  handling  and 
polishing." 

— Montaigne. 

"Aristotle  was  asked  how  much  educated  men  were 
superior  to  those  uneducated.  'As  much,'  said  he,  'as  the 
living  are  to  the  dead.'" 

— Laertius. 

"It  was  a  saying  of  his  that  education  was  an  orna- 
ment in  prosperity  and  a  refuge  in  adversity." 

—Ibid. 

"By  labor  and  intent  study  (my  position  in  this  life), 
joined  with  the  strong  propensity  of  nature,  I  might  per- 
haps leave  something  so  written  to  after  times,  as  they 
should  not  willingly  let  it  die." 

—Milton. 

"The  heights  by  great  men  reached  and  kept, 
Were  not  attained  by  sudden  flight, 
But  they,  while  their  companions  slept, 
Were  toiling  upward  in  the  night." 

— Longfellow. 

"Whoso  neglects  learning  in  his  youth  loses  the  past 
and  is  dead  for  the  future." 

—Euripides. 


24  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

"It  is  only  the  ignorant  who  despise  education." 

— Publius  Syrus. 

"  Man  is  the  only  one  that  knows  nothing,  that  can  learn 
nothing  without  being  taught." 

—Pliny. 

"  That  place  that  does 
Contain  my  books,  the  best  companions,  is 
To  me  a  glorious  court,  where  hourly  I 
Converse  with  the  old  sages  and  philosophers." 

—Fletcher. 

''A  wise  man  will  hear  and  increase  learning." 

—Proverbs,  i,  5. 

The  necessity  of  education  is  illustrated  in  the  first 
chapter  of  the  Book  of  Daniel,  verses  3  to  6. 

The  only  adverse  authority  which  I  can  find,  and  which 
comes  directly  in  point  in  favor  of  those  who  believe  that 
William  Shaksper  was  a  natural-born  poet,  is  in  Much 
Ado  About  Nothing,  in  Dogberry's  charge  to  Neighbor 
Sea-Coale  (iii,  3,  9): 

"  Come  hither,  neighbor  Sea-Coale.  God  hath  blest  you 
with  a  good  name:  to  be  a  well-favored  man  is  the  gift 
of  fortune;  but  to  write  and  read  comes  by  nature." 

Of  course,  if  it  can  be  shown  by  facts  outside  of  the 
Shakespeare  plays  and  poems  themselves  that  William 
Shaksper,  of  Stratford-on-Avon,  obtained  by  training 
such  an  education  as  would  enable  him  to  write  any  or 
aU  of  the  plays  and  poems  now  credited  to  him,  his  title 
thereto  would  not  be  questioned;  but  where  the  facts 
and  presumptions  are  all  the  other  way,  it  is  but  proper 
and  right  that  these  facts  and  presumptions  should  be 
stated  and  considered.  Sooner  or  later,  mankind  w^ill 
arrive  at  the  truth  as  to  the  authorship. 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  THE  PLAYS  AND  POEMS.      25 

It  is  unfortunate  that  Thomas  Heywood  never  com- 
pleted and  pubHshed  his  lives  of  the  poets  of  his  time. 
The  editor  of  his  plays,  in  his  memoir  of  Thomas  Hey- 
wood, says  at  page  41 :  "  We  have  evidence  that  Heywood 
was  for  many  years  engaged  upon  a  collection  of  the  lives 
of  poets  of  his  own  day  and  country,  as  well  as  of  other 
times  and  nations."  It  would,  of  course,  have  included 
Shakespeare  and  his  dramatic  predecessors  and  contem- 
poraries; and  it  is  possible  that  the  manuscript  or  part 
of  it  may  yet  lurk  in  some  unexplored  receptacle,  Richard 
Braithwaite,  in  his  "Scholars'  Medley,"  1614,  gave  the  ear- 
liest information  of  Heywood's  intention  to  make ''a  descrip- 
tion of  all  poets'  lives  " ;  and  ten  years  afterward,  in  his  nine 
books  of  various  history  concerning  women,  Heywood 
himself  tells  us  that  his  title  of  the  projected  work  would 
be,  ''The  Lives  of  all  the  Poets,  modern  and  foreign." 
It  was  still  in  progress  in  1635,  when  the  "Hierarchic  of 
the  Blessed  Angells  "  appeared ;  on  page  245  of  which  work 
we  meet  with  the  following  passage:  "In  proceeding 
further,  I  might  have  forestalled  a  work  which  hereafter 
(I  hope)  by  God's  assistance,  to  commit  to  the  public 
view,  namely,  the  Lives  of  all  the  Poets,  fooreine  and 
moderne,  from  the  first  before  Homer  to  the  Novissimi 
and  last,  of  what  nation  or  language  soever." 

It  would  be  a  valuable  contribution  to  the  history  of 
English  literature  if,  in  some  old  chest  or  in  some  closet  in 
some  old  English  home,  that  manuscript  could  be  found. 
It  might  explain  beyond  possibility  of  denial  or  contra- 
diction who  the  "Mellifluous  Shake-speare,"  as  Heywood 
puts  the  name,  really  was.  While  Heywood's  manuscript 
may  never  be  found,  it  may  be  that  there  exists  some- 
where in  England  written  evidence  which  will  yet  con- 


26  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

vince  the  world  of  the  utter  foohshness  of  the  Shaksper 
claim.  Possibly,  too,  there  may  yet  be  found  in  some 
desk  or  drawer  or  unused  receptacle  in  some  one  or  more 
of  England's  homes,  some  paper  or  document  that  may 
throw  light  on  the  authorship  of  one  or  more  of  the  poems 
and  plays  now  to  be  examined. 

In  such  investigations  and  examinations  the  diligent 
searcher  for  the  truth  as  to  the  Shakespeare  plays  may 
yet  be  rewarded.  The  play  of  John  a  Kent  and  John 
a  Comber  was  found  among  the  papers  of  the  ancient 
family  of  the  Mostyns  and  fell  under  the  notice  of  Sir 
Frederic  Madden,  the  principal  keeper  of  the  manuscripts 
in  the  British  Museum.  The  play  of  first  Henry  the 
Fourth  was  found  in  1841  by  the  Rev.  Lambert  B.  Larking, 
Vicar  of  Ryash,  in  the  muniment  room  of  the  ancient  seat 
of  the  Derings  at  Surrenden.  There  is  no  reason  why 
careful  searches  may  not  yet  bring  their  reward  to  the 
seeker  after  the  truth  in  the  important  matter  of  the 
Shakespeare  authorship. 


CHAPTER  III. 

HOW   PLAYS  WERE   WRITTEN   IN   SHAKSPER's  TIME. 

"A  truth's  a  truth;  the  rogy£s  are  marvelous  poor." 

—All's  Well,  iv,  3. 

Very  few  persons  either  in  Great  Britain  or  America 
know  either  how  or  by  whom  plays  were  generally  written 
between  the  years  1590  and  1610,  the  interval  during 
which  the  poems  and  plays  appeared.  It  is  taken  for 
granted  that  writers  of  plays  wrote  then  as  they  do  now, 
each  for  himself,  and  that  rights  in  the  play  and  its  publi- 
cation were  reserved  to  them.  But  by  whom  and  how 
they  were  written  between  the  above  dates  is  not  a  matter 
of  conjecture  or  supposition  at  all;  and  hence  if  we  under- 
stand the  custom  of  the  times  in  that  regard,  we  shall 
get  some  light  at  least  on  the  authorship  of  the  Shakes- 
peare plays.  The  principal  writers  of  plaj^s  in  and  near 
Shaksper's  time  were  Francis  Beaumont,  Richard  Brome, 
George  Chapman,  Henry  Chettle,  Samuel  Daniel,  John 
Day,  Thomas  Dekker,  Michael  Drayton,  John  Fletcher, 
Richard  Hathaway,  William  Haughton,  Thomas  Hey- 
wood,  Ben  Jonson,  Christopher  Marlowe,  John  Marston, 
Thomas  Middleton,  Anthony  Monday,  Thomas  Nash, 
Henry  Porter,  William  Rankins,  Samuel  Rowley,  Martin 
Slater,  Wentworth  Smyth,  Anthony  Wadeson,  John  Web- 
ster, and  Robert  Wilson.  These  dramatists  generally 
wrote,  not  individually,  but  by  a  system  of  collaboration. 
Some  of  them  were  actors  as  well  as  dramatists,  and  they 
were  all  poor  in  pocket  and  very  often  bound  by  contract 
or  in  a  manner  enslaved  to  the  proprietor  of  the  theatre. 


28  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Henslowe's  Diary  shows  not  only  the  number  of  times 
that  different  plays  were  represented  and  generally  the 
day  when  they  were  first  acted,  but  it  shows  sometimes 
also  who  wrote  the  plays,  the  dates  of  their  composition, 
and  it  often  gives  the  names  of  all  of  those  who  had  a 
hand  in  their  authorship.  This  Philip  Henslowe  was  a 
joint  proprietor  with  Edmund  Alleyn  in  the  Rose  Theatre, 
the  Hope  Theatre,  the  Fortune  Theatre,  and  one  in  New- 
ington  Butts  and  Paris  Garden.  It  is  true  that  Henslowe's 
writing  was  not  very  good  and  that  of  his  clerk  not  much 
better,  and  that  neither  of  them  could  spell  correctly; 
but  nevertheless  Henslowe  has  removed  the  dust  which 
blinded  the  eyes  of  some  of  the  most  learned  commenta- 
tors and  compelled  them  to  be  a  little  more  conservative 
and  careful  in  their  guesses  as  to  authorship. 

August  Wilhelm  von  Schlegel  delivered  a  course  of 
lectures  on  dramatic  poetry  in  1808  and  obtained  high 
celebrity  for  them  on  the  continent.  Madame  de  Stael 
said  of  them  that  "every  opinion  formed  by  the  author, 
every  epithet  given  to  the  writers  of  whom  he  speaks,  is 
beautiful  and  just,  concise  and  animated." 

Speaking  of  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  a  play  printed  in  1600 
with  the  name  of  William  Shakespeare  as  the  author  on 
the  title  page,  in  connection  with  the  plays  of  Thomas 
Lord  Cromwell  and  A  Yorkshire  Tragedy,  Schlegel  said, 
''  The  three  last  pieces  are  not  only  unquestionably  Shakes- 
peare's but,  in  my  opinion,  they  deserve  to  be  classed 
among  his  best  and  maturest  works.  Thomas  Lord 
Cromwell  and  Sir  John  Oldcastle  are  biographical  dramas 
and  in  this  species  they  are  models.  The  first,  by  its 
subject,  attaches  itself  to  Henry  the  Eighth,  and  the  second 
to  Henry  the  Fifth.     Still  farther  there  has  been  ascribed 


HOW   PLAYS  WERE   WRITTEN   IN    SHAKSPER's   TIME.     29 

to  him  the  Merry  Devil  of  Edmonton,  a  comedy  in  one 
act,  printed  in  Dodsley's  Collection  of  Old  Plays.  This 
has  certainly  some  appearance  in  its  favor.  It  contains 
a  merry  landlord,  who  bears  great  similarity  to  the  one  in 
the  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor."  All  of  this  was  written 
without  knowledge  of  the  discovery  of  Henslowe's  Diary 
in  the  library  of  Dulwich  College.  The  Diary  was  printed 
in  1841  by  the  Shakespeare  Society,  and  on  page  158 
thereof  occurs  the  following  entry: 

"This  16  of  October  99  [meaning  1599]  Received  by 
me  of  Philip  Henslow  to  pay  Mr.  Monday,  Mr.  Drayton 
and  Mr.  Wilson  and  Hathway  for  the  first  prte  of  the 
lyfe  of  Sir  John  Oldcastell  and  in  earnest  of  the  second 
prte,  for  the  use  of  the  company  ten  pounds.  I  say 
received."  Farther  along,  on  page  236  of  the  Diary,  is 
the  following  entry : 

"Lent  unto  the  companye,  the  17  of  Auguste  1602  to 
pay  unto  Thomas  Deckers,  for  new  adicyons  in  Ouldcaselle 
the  some  of  xxxx  s." 

The  learned  commentator,  Schlegel,  was  therefore 
decidedly  mistaken  in  saying  that  the  play  of  Sir  John 
Oldcastle  was  "  unquestionably  Shakespeare's  and  among 
his  best  and  maturest  works."  Four  dramatists  com- 
posed it,  viz:  Anthony  Monday,  Michael  Drayton,  Robert 
Wilson,  and  Richard  Hathaway.  Thomas  Dekker  made 
additions  to  it.  Schlegel  was  also  mistaken  as  to  the 
Merry  Devil  of  Edmonton.  That  play  was  written  by 
Michael  Drayton. 

In  this  connection  it  is  amusing  to  read  the  satirical 
comment  of  Sjnnonds  in  his  "Shakespeare's  Predecessors," 
page  390:  "The  names  at  least  of  Lord  Cromwell  and  Sir 
John  Oldcastle"  he  says,  "must  remain  as  danger  signals 


30  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

upon  the  quicksands  of  oracular  criticism.  Schlegel 
fathered  Oldcastle  on  Shakespeare." 

This  blunder  of  Schlegel  is  not,  however,  without  its 
compensatory  aids  to  the  discovery  of  the  truth.  He  has 
connected  the  names  of  Drayton  and  Dekker  with  the 
Shakespeare  mystery  in  such  a  way  as  to  deserve  careful 
examination  and  investigation  of  the  literary  ability  of 
these  two  poets  by  scholars  and  commentators.  It  will 
be  here  noted,  as  above  stated,  that  there  are  copies  of 
the  play  of  Sir  John  Oldcastle  printed  in  1600  with  the 
name  of  William  Shakespeare  on  the  title  page  as  author. 
WTiether  William  Shaksper  knew  this  or  not  is  not  very 
important,  but  it  is  clear  that  the  playwriters,  Monday, 
Drayton,  Wilson,  and  Hathaway,  and  the  play  reviser 
and  dresser,  Thomas  Dekker,  knew  that  their  play  went 
abroad  under  a  name  similar  to  that  of  William  Shaksper 
and  that  Shaksper  had  no  more  to  do  with  its  composi- 
tion than  the  reader  has. 

The  Diary  also  discloses  another  fact  in  illustration, 
not  merely  of  the  practice  of  collaboration,  but  also  in 
settlement  of  the  question  of  authorship  of  another  play 
wTongly  attributed  to  Shaksper.  I  give  the  entries  just 
as  they  appear.  On  page  147  occurs  the  following: 
"Lent  unto  Thomas  Dounton,  to  lende  unto  Mr.  Dickers 
and  Harey  Cheattell,  in  earneste  of  ther  boocke  called 
Tro3^eles  and  Creassedaye  the  some  of  3  pounds  Aprell  7 
day  1599."  Following  that  entry  is  another  confirma- 
tory one,  "Lent  unto  Harey  Cheattell  and  Mr.  Dickers, 
in  prte  of  payment  of  ther  boocke  called  Troyelles  and 
Cresseda  the  16  of  Aprell  1599,  xxs." 

These  remarkable  entries  not  only  refute  the  Shakes- 
pearean claim  to  the  authorship  of  Troilus  and  Cressida, 


HOW   PLAYS   WERE   WRITTEN   IN   SHAKSPER's   TIME.     31 

but  the  collaboration  of  two  men  in  its  composition  tallies 
exactly  with  the  opinion  of  the  leading  commentators 
that  one  part  of  the  play  of  Troilus  and  Cressida  is  alto- 
gether different  in  style  and  method  from  the  other  part. 
Even  the  careless  reader  of  the  play  of  Troilus  and  Cressida 
will  notice  the  difference  in  the  style  and  composition  of 
parts  of  the  play,  naturally  evidencing  that  it  was  the  work 
of  more  than  one  writer.  These  remarkable  entries  as  to 
Troilus  and  Cressida  will  be  further  considered  in  a  sub- 
sequent chapter,  when  the  play  is  examined. 

But  a  much  stronger  instance  of  collaboration,  and  one 
which  has  a  bearing  on  the  question  of  the  authorship  of 
the  Shakespeare  plays,  is  recorded  on  page  221  of  the 
Diary.  I  copy  it  verbatim:  ''Lent  unto  the  companye, 
the  22  of  May  1602  to  give  unto  Antoney  Monday  and 
Mikell  Drayton,  Webester  Mydelton  and  the  Rest,  in 
earnest  of  a  boocke  called  Sesers  Falle  the  some  of  five 
pounds."  Collier,  the  editor  of  the  Diary,  adds  the  follow- 
ing note:  ''Malone  passed  over  this  important  entry 
without  notice;  it  shows  that  in  May  1602,  four  poets, 
who  are  named,  viz:  Monday,  Drayton,  Webster,  and 
Middleton,  and  some  others  not  named,  were  engaged  in 
writing  a  play  upon  the  subject  of  the  fall  of  Caesar." 

This  entry  will  be  considered  and  discussed  hereafter 
in  connection  with  the  play  of  Julius  Csesar  as  published 
in  the  Folio  of  1623. 

When  Thomas  Heywood  wrote  the  play  of  the  English 
Traveler,  he  stated,  in  the  address  to  the  reader,  that  the 
play  was  one  ''among  two  hundred  and  twenty,  in  which 
I  have  had  either  an  entire  hand  or  at  the  least  a  main 
finger."  He  further  states  as  to  these  plays  of  his  "that 
many  of  them  by  shifting  and  change  of  companies  have 


32  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

been  negligently  lost.  Others  of  them  are  still  retained 
in  the  hands  of  some  actors,  who  think  it  against  their 
peculiar  profit  to  have  them  come  into  print." 

Even  the  surly  and  captious  Ben  Jonson,  who  insisted 
on  sticking  closely  to  the  unities,  was  a  collaborator  with 
Chapman  and  Marston  in  the  composition  of  the  comedy 
of  Eastward  Hoe,  and  he  states  in  an  introduction  to  the 
play  of  Sejanus  that  as  it  appeared  upon  the  stage  "a, 
second  pen  had  a  good  hand  in  it."  In  the  appendix  to 
the  Hamlet  of  the  Variorum  Shakespeare  of  Furness,  at 
page  7  of  the  second  volume,  there  is  a  complete  corrob- 
oration of  my  assertion  of  fact  as  to  how  plays  were  written 
in  Shaksper's  time.     The  editor  says: 

''Just  as  Malone's  edition  of  1790  was  issuing  from  the 
press,  there  was  found  at  Dulwich  College  a  large  folio 
manuscript  volume,  containing  valuable  information  re- 
specting theatrical  affairs  from  the  year  1591  to  1609. 
The  volume  is  in  the  handwriting  of  Philip  Henslowe,  a 
proprietor  or  joint  lessee  of  more  than  one  theatre  during 
that  period,  and  contains,  among  others,  his  account  of 
receipts  and  expenditures  in  connection  with  his  theatrical 
management.  Malone  reprinted  copious  extracts  from 
this  manuscript  in  the  first  volume  of  his  edition;  but  it 
was  reprinted  entire  by  the  Shakespeare  Society  in  1845, 
with  a  valuable  preface  by  Collier.  'Henslowe,'  says 
Collier,  '  was  an  ignorant  man,  even  for  the  time  in  which 
he  lived,  and  for  the  station  he  occupied;  he  wrote  a  bad 
hand,  adopted  any  orthography  that  suited  his  notion  of 
the  sound  of  words,  especially  of  proper  names  (neces- 
sarily of  most  frequent  occurrence),  and  he  kept  his  book, 
as  respects  dates  in  particular,  in  the  most  disorderly, 
negligent,  and  confused  manner.  Sometimes,  indeed,  he 
observes  a  sort  of  system  in  his  entries;  but  often  when 


HOW    PLAYS   WERE    WRITTEN    IN    SHAKSPER's   TIME.     33 

he  wished  to  make  a  note,  he  seems  to  have  opened  his 
book  at  random  and  to  have  written  what  he  wanted  in 
any  space  he  fomid  vacant.  He  generally  used  his  own 
pen,  but,  as  we  have  stated,  in  some  places  the  hand  of  a 
scribe  or  clerk  is  visible;  and  here  and  there  the  drama- 
tists and  actors  themselves  wrote  the  item  in  which  they 
were  concerned,  for  the  sake  perhaps  of  saving  the  old 
manager  trouble;  thus  in  various  parts  of  the  manuscript, 
we  meet  with  the  handwriting,  not  merely  the  signatures, 
of  Drayton,  Chapman,  Dekker,  Chettle,  Porter,  Wilson, 
Hathaway,  Day,  S.  Rowley,  Haughton,  Rankins,  and 
Wadeson.'  AATiere  the  names  of  nearly  all  the  dramatic 
poets  of  the  age  are  to  be  frequently  found,  we  might 
certainly  count  on  finding  that  of  Shakespeare,  but  the 
shadow  in  which  Shakespeare's  early  life  was  spent  en- 
velops him  here  too  and  his  name,  as  Collier  says,  is  not 
met  with  in  any  part  of  the  manuscript.  The  rapidity 
with  which  plays  must  have  been  written  at  that  time  is 
most  remarkable  and  is  testified  beyond  dispute  by  later 
portions  of  Henslowe's  manuscript  where,  among  other 
charges,  he  registers  the  sums  paid,  the  dates  of  payment, 
and  the  authors  who  received  the  money.  Nothing  was 
more  common  than  for  dramatists  to  unite  their  abilities 
and  resources,  and  when  a  piece  on  any  account  was  to  be 
brought  out  with  peculiar  despatch,  three,  four,  five,  and 
perhaps  even  six  poets  engaged  themselves  on  different 
portions  of  it.  Evidence  of  this  dramatic  combination 
will  be  found  of  such  frequent  occurrence  that  it  is  vain 
here  to  point  out  particular  pages  where  it  is  to  be  met 
with."  If  the  reader  will  bear  in  mind  the  facts  shown 
relative  to  the  ignorance  of  William  Shaksper,  he  will 
have  no  trouble  in  understanding  why  Shaksper's  name 
does    not    appear    anywhere    in    Henslowe's    Diary.     If 


34  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Shaksper  had  been  a  composer  of  plays,  Henslowe  would 
certainly  have  employed  him  for  that  purpose. 

These  collaborating  playwrights  were  careless,  easy- 
going fellows  who  sold  the  product  of  their  brains  for  a 
mere  pittance.  Two  or  three  or  four,  five,  and  some- 
times six  would  agree  with  the  manager  to  write  a  play 
for  his  theatre;  and  when  finished,  it  would  be  sold  out- 
right to  him  for  a  paltry  sum.  The  play,  when  sold,  no 
longer  belonged  to  the  author  or  group  of  authors.  It 
became  the  property  of  the  manager,  whose  money  had 
purchased  it.  To  illustrate  the  fact  of  such  proprietor- 
ship and  to  show  the  ownership  of  the  proprietor  of  the 
theatre  in  thirty-two  plays,  one  of  which  was  very  proba- 
bly "Love's  Labor's  Lost,"  I  quote  in  full  from  page  276 
of  the  Diary.  Henslowe,  it  will  be  remembered,  was 
manager  of  the  business,  and  as  his  spelling  of  the  titles  of 
the  plays  is  abominably  bad,  I  have  given  them  correctly. 
"A  note  of  all  such  books  as  belong  to  the  stock,  and 
such  as  I  have  bought  since  the  3d  of  March,  1598. 
Alexander  and  Lodovick  King  Arthur's  Life  and 

Alice  Pierce  Death 

Biron  Madman's  Morris 

Black  Batman  of  the  North     Mother  Redcap 

Parts  1  and  2  Phaeton 

Black  Joan  Phocus 

Brennoralt  Pierce  of  Winchester 

Cobbler  of  Queen  Hithe  Pythagoras 

Every  Man  in  his  Humor         Robin  Hood,  Parts  1  and  2 
Friar  Pendleton  Triangle  of  Cuckolds 

Goodwin,  Parts  1  and  2  Vayvode 

Hardicanute  Welshman's  Prize 

Hercules,  Parts  1  and  2  Woman  Will  Have  her  Will. 


HOW   PLAYS    WERE    WRITTEN   IN   SHAKSPER's   TIME.     35 

If  the  diary  of  this  ignoramus,  Henslowe,  had  never 
been  found,  and  nothing  had  ever  been  known  of  him 
except  the  date  of  his  birth  and  death,  and  if  the  pub- 
hsher  had  printed  these  plays  as  the  works  of  Phihp 
Henslowe,  they  would  have  passed  current  as  Henslowe's 
plays,  for  they  belonged  to  him  absolutely. 

Let  us  next  see  how  plays  were  bought.  An  extract 
from  the  Diary,  at  page  106,  will  show  how  Henslowe 
became  the  owner  of  the  play  called  ''Mother  Redcap" 
above  named;  and  the  quotation  is  given  verbatim  to 
make  clear  his  illiteracy. 

"Layde  out,  the  22  of  desembr  1597  for  a  boocke 
called  Mother  Redcape,  to  Antony  Monday  and  Mr. 
Drayton  Hi." 

Another  extract,  at  page  222,  will  inform  us  as  to  the 
joint  distillation  of  the  learning  and  theatrical  skill  of  five 
dramatists  bought  by  him. 

''Lent  unto  Thomas  Downton,  the  29  of  May  1602,  to 
paye  Thomas  Dickers,  Drayton,  Mydellton,  and  Webster 
and  Mondaye  in  fulle  payment  for  the  play  called  too 
harpes  the  some  of  three  pounds." 

The  Two  Harpies  or  Harps  therefore  contained  the 
embodied  labor  of  five  authors  at  twelve  shillings  each. 

Beside  the  purchase  of  plays  outright,  Henslowe  bought 
in  a  very  cheap  way  the  services  of  some  of  these  drama- 
tists as  revisers  or  dressers  of  plays  or  as  makers  of  addi- 
tions to  them.  If  a  play  did  not  suit  the  audience  or 
tickle  the  ears  of  the  groundlings,  it  had  to  be  added  to, 
revised,  dressed,  or  pruned;  and  for  this  purpose  Thomas 
Dekker  was  principally  employed,  though  at  intervals 
the  names  of  Benjamin  Jonson,  Henry  Chettle,  and  others 
appear  in  the  Diary.     Thus  on  September  25,  1601,  "Ben- 


36  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

gemen  Johnson  upon  his  writings  of  his  adicions  in  Ger- 
onymus"  got  forty  shilHngs,  and  on  June  24,  1602,  ''for 
new  Adicyons  for  Jeronymo"  he  received  ten  pounds. 
Henry  Chettle  "for  mendinge  of  Robert  Hoode  for  the 
Corte"  got  ten  shillings.  "For  mendinge  of  the  boocke 
called  the  prowde  Woman,"  he  got  ten  shillings  on  Jan- 
uary 21,  1601,  and  "for  mendynge  of  the  fyrst  prte  of 
Cardonlle  Wollsey,"  he  got  twenty  shillings.  On  page 
71  of  the  Diary  is  the  following  entry  as  to  Dekker,  who 
was  afterward  reviled  by  Jonson  in  his  Poetaster  as  a 
dresser  of  plays:  "Pd  unto  Thomas  Dickens,  the  20  of 
Desembr  1579  for  adycyons  to  Fostus  twentie  shellinges 
and  fyve  shellenges  for  a  prolog  to  Marlowes  Tamberlen, 
so  in  all  I  saye  payde  twentye  fyve  shellinges." 

Buller  asserts  upon  the  authority  of  Warner  that  this 
entry  is  a  forgery.  But  there  could  be  no  motive  for  such  a 
forgery ;  and  Warner's  own  comment  shows  that  it  is  merely 
a  crude  opinion  without  any  reason  whatever  to  support  it. 

Sidney  Lee,  an  ardent  believer  in  the  ability  of  Shaksper 
to  write  the  plays,  confirms  my  statement  of  how  plays 
were  written  in  Shaksper's  time.  At  page  45  of  his  life 
of  the  myriad-minded  William,  he  says: 

"The  professional  playwrights  sold  their  plays  out- 
right to  one  or  the  other  of  the  acting  companies  and 
they  retained  no  legal  interest  in  them  after  the  manu- 
script passed  into  the  hands  of  the  theatrical  manager. 
It  was  not  unusual  for  the  manager  to  invite  extensive 
revision  of  a  play  at  the  hands  of  others  than  the  author 
before  it  was  produced  on  the  stage,  and  again  whenever 
it  was  revived." 

A  remarkable  entry  also  in  confirmation  of  the  system 
of  collaboration  is  the  entry  on  page  222,  in  which  Hen- 


HOW  PLAYS   WERE   WRITTEN   IN   SHAKSPER's   TIME.      37 

slowe  states  that  he  paid  to  John  Day  on  May  28,  1602, 
the  sum  of  forty  shilhngs  in  full  payment  for  the  Bristol 
Tragedy,  "written  by  himself."  Collier,  the  editor  of 
the  Diary,  adds  the  following  explanatory  note:  "The 
meaning  of  the  words  'written  by  himself  is  most  likely 
that  Day  was  the  author  of  it,  without  any  coadjutors." 

As  a  matter  of  fact  then,  not  to  be  gainsaid,  it  appears 
that  during  the  period  from  1590  to  1610,  plays,  for  the 
most  part,  were  written  by  collaboration,  and  the  illus- 
trious men  whose  joint  labors  enriched  the  theatrical 
manager  were  poverty-stricken  fellows  who  sold  their 
poetry  and  wit  for  paltry  sums.  As  Collier,  in  his  intro- 
duction to  the  Diary,  says,  "Nothing  was  more  common 
than  for  dramatists  to  unite  their  abilities  and  resources; 
and  when  a  piece  on  any  account  was  to  be  brought  out 
with  peculiar  despatch,  three,  four,  five,  and  perhaps  even 
six  poets  engaged  themselves  upon  different  portions  of  it." 

Robert  Burton,  who  probably  knew  some  of  these 
scholarly  poets,  describes  them  and  their  condition  very 
accurately  in  his  "Anatomy  of  Melancholy."  "  To  say  truth, 
'tis  the  common  fortune  of  most  scholars  to  be  servile  and 
poor,  to  complain  pitifully,  and  lay  open  their  wants  to 
their  respectless  patrons;  and  which  is  too  common  in 
those  dedicatory  epistles,  for  hope  of  gain  to  lie,  flatter, 
and  with  hyperbolical  eulogiums  and  commendations,  to 
magnify  and  extol  an  illiterate  unworthy  idiot  whom  they 
should  rather,  as  Machiavel  observes,  vilify  and  rail  at 
downright  for  his  most  notorious  villainies  and  vices. 
They  are  like  Indians — they  have  stores  of  gold,  but  know 
not  the  worth  of  it;  for  I  am  of  Synesius'  opinion  that 
King  Hiero  got  more  by  Simonides'  acquaintance  than 
Simonides  did  by  his.     They  have  their  best  education, 


38  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

good  institution,  sole  qualification  from  us,  and  when  they 
have  done  well,  their  honor  and  immortality  from  us. 
We  are  the  living  tombs,  registers  and  as  so  many 
trumpeters  of  their  fames.  What  was  Achilles  without 
Homer?  Alexander  without  Arrian  and  Curtius?  Who 
had  known  the  Caesars,  but  for  Suetonius  and  Dion? 

'Before  great  Agamemnon  reigned 
Reign'd  kings  as  great  as  he  and  brave 
Whose  huge  ambitions  now  contain' d 
In  the  small  compass  of  a  grave ; 
In  endless  night  they  sleep  unwept,  unknown. 
No  bard  they  had  to  make  all  time  their  owti.' 

"  Poverty  is  the  Muses'  patrimony,  and  as  that  poetical 
divinity  teacheth  us,  when  Jupiter's  daughters  were  each 
of  them  married,  the  Muses  alone  were  left  solitary,  for- 
saken of  all  suitors,  and  I  believe  it  was  because  they  had 
no  portion.  Ever  since,  all  their  followers  are  poor,  for- 
saken, and  left  unto  themselves.  Insomuch  that  as 
Petronius  argues,  you  shall  likely  know  them  by  their 
clothes.  'There  came,'  said  he,  'by  chance  unto  my 
company  a  fellow  not  very  spruce  to  look  on.  I  asked 
him  what  he  was;  he  answered,  a  poet.  I  demanded 
again  why  he  was  so  ragged?  He  told  me  that  this  kind 
of  learning  never  made  any  man  rich.'" 


CHAPTER  IV. 

WILLIAM   SHAKSPEE   HAS  NO  PLACE  IN  HENSLOWE's  DIARY. 

"  To  my  knowledge, 
I  never  in  my  life  did  look  on  him.'^ 

—King  Richard  II,  ii,  3. 

The  fact  that  AYilliam  Shaksper's  name  nowhere 
appears  in  any  part  of  Henslowe's  Diary,  while  having 
some  weight  as  against  his  authorship  of  the  plays,  would 
not  of  itself  have  much  significance  were  it  not  for  the  fact, 
not  much  known  and  heretofore  not  dwelt  upon,  that  the 
company  of  which  Henslowe  was  the  manager  and  chief 
proprietor,  owned  and  purchased  some  of  the  Shake- 
speare plays,  and  if  Shaksper  had  written  them  or  any  part 
of  them,  or  had* disposed  of  his  right  and  title  to  them  as 
author,  his  name  would  certainly  have  appeared  in  the 
Diary.  Titus  Andronicus  appeared  as  a  new  play  and 
was  acted  at  Henslowe's  theatre  for  the  first  time  on  the 
twenty-third  day  of  January,  1593.  That  it  appeared  as 
an  entirely  new  play  is  conclusively  proved  by  Henslowe's 
entry  to  that  effect  on  the  outer  margin  to  designate  it 
as  such;  and  that  it  appeared  on  that  day  is  clear  from 
the  following  entry : 

"R'd  at  titus  and  Ondronicus  the  23  of  Jenewary 
1593  3  pounds  8  shillmgs."  This  entry  meant  that  this 
sum  represented  the  theatre  receipts  for  the  first  pres- 
entation of  the  tragedy. 

In  commenting  on  this  entry,  Collier,  the  editor  em- 
ployed by  the  Shakespeare  Society,  says,  in  a  note  at 
page  33  of  the  Diary: 


40  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

"Elsewhere  sometimes  spelt  'Tittus  and  Ondronicus' 
Malone  had  no  doubt  that  this  was  the  original  Titus 
Andronicus  before  Shakespeare  touched  it  (Shaksper  by 
Bosw.  3,  300).  It  may  be  so  or  it  may  have  been  a  dis- 
tinct play  on  the  same  subject.  Whatever  it  was,  it  is  a 
novel  and  material  fact  that  it  was  a  new  play  on  the 
23  Jan.  1593.  Henslowe  placed  ne  in  the  outer  margin 
to  denote  it." 

Here,  then,  is,  as  Collier  says,  a  potent  fact  very  clear 
and  apparent  that  a  play  called  Titus  Andronicus  was 
written  prior  to  January  23,  1593,  and  put  on  the  boards 
at  that  date,  running  through  that  season  and  the  suc- 
ceeding year  also  as  the  Diary  shows.  Now,  while  it  was 
all  right  for  Malone  to  say  that  this  was  the  original  Titus 
Andronicus,  because  the  presumption,  unless  contra- 
dicted and  overcome,  would  warrant  that  assertion  in  the 
guise  of  an  opinion  and  a  very  decided  opinion,  yet  he 
had  no  warrant  of  fact  or  presumption  to  assert  that 
William  Shaksper  had  touched  it.  Where  does  it  appear 
in  all  the  history  of  the  times  that  the  play  of  Titus 
Andronicus  was  ever  amended,  revised,  or  dressed  by 
William  Shaksper?  It  was  a  mere  guess  by  Malone;  and 
Collier,  confounded  by  "the  novel  and  material  entry," 
hazards  the  guess  that  it  might  have  been  "a  distinct 
play  on  the  same  subject."  I  put  it  to  the  unprejudiced 
reader  that  the  natural  hypothesis,  founded  on  the  unim- 
peachable statement  in  the  Diary,  is  that  the  Titus 
Andronicus  of  the  Diary  was  the  Titus  Andronicus  of  the 
plays,  unless  that  hypothesis  is  destroyed  by  satisfactory 
evidence  to  the  contrary. 

On  page  34  of  the  Diary  it  is  shown  that  the  tragedy 
of  King  Lear  was  acted  on  the  sixth  day  of  April,  1593. 


SHAKSPER   HAS   NO   PLACE   IN   HENSLOWE's   DIARY.      41 

The  entry  is  as  follows:  "R'd  at  King  Leare  the  6  of 
Aprell  1593  XXXVIII  s."  The  name  of  William  Shaksper 
is  not  mentioned  at  all  in  connection  with  this  play,  and 
we  are  treated,  in  a  foot  note,  to  the  following  positive 
opinion  of  the  editor  that  "this  King  Lear  was  certainly 
a  much  older  play  than  Shakespeare's  King  Lear,  and  at 
this  date  our  great  dramatist  was  not  one  of  the  Queen's 
men."  The  dictum  of  Collier  is  utterly  worthless,  because 
it  is  not  substantiated  by  any  fact  in  support  of  it.  The 
Diary  does  not  mention  Shaksper  either  as  author, 
mender  or  reviser.  The  play  could  not  have  been  a  popu- 
lar one,  since  it  does  not  appear  to  have  been  repeated, 
and  it  would  not  be  popular  now  if  put  upon  the  stage. 

Henry  the  Fifth  was  acted  for  the  first  time  on  May 
14,  1592,  as  is  clearly  shown  on  page  26  of  the  Diary. 
"Malone,"  says  the  editor  in  a  note,  'Hakes  no  notice  of 
this  play,  which  at  least  was  the  same  in  subject  as  Shake- 
speare's work.  Possibly  he  read  it  'Harey  the  VI,'  but  it 
is  clearly  'Harey  the  5th.'  This  is  the  piece  to  which 
Nash  alluded  in  his  'Pierce  Penniless'  published  in  1592; 
and  the  famous  victories  of  Henry  5  was  entered  at  Sta- 
tioner's Hall  to  be  printed  in  1594.  Malone  was  not 
aware  that  any  such  historical  drama  was  mentioned  by 
Henslowe."  It  was  a  very  popular  piece,  for  it  was  acted 
nine  times  in  the  winter  of  1595  and  hi  1596,  and  brought 
good  receipts  to  the  company.  The  mventory  of  the  goods 
of  My  Lord  Admiral's  men,  set  out  at  page  271  of  the 
Diary,  recites  that  in  the  year  1598  the  doublet  and  velvet 
gown  of  Harry  the  fifth  were  "gone  and  lost,"  while  at 
page  276  it  is  shown  that  the  company,  on  the  13th  of 
March,  1598,  was  supplied  with  a  velvet  gown  for  Harry 
and  a  satin  doublet  laid  with  golden  lace,  indicating  that 


42  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

the  play  had  kept  its  hold  upon  the  theatre-goers  from 
year  to  year. 

In  all  these  entries  there  is  no  mention  of  Shaksper 
as  the  author  or  part  author  of  the  play  or  of  any  right, 
title,  or  interest  of  his  therein. 

The  play  of  Henry  the  Sixth  was  acted  for  the  first 
time  in  the  theatre  on  the  third  day  of  March,  1591,  as 
the  Diary  shows.  The  comments  of  Collier  below  this 
entry,  at  page  22,  are  significant: 

"This  play,  whether  by  Shakespeare  or  not,  was 
extremely  popular.  It  produced  Henslowe  £1  lis  Od 
for  his  share  on  its  fourteenth  representation.  On 
its  performance  in  1591,  we  here  see  that  it  brought  him 
£S  16s  5d.  Malone  was  of  the  opinion  that  it  was  the  first 
part  of  Henry  the  Sixth,  included  among  Shakespeare's 
works;  and  it  is  certain  that  this  entry  of  3  of  March, 
1591,  relates  to  its  original  production,  as  Henslowe  has 
put  his  mark  'ne'  in  the  margin." 

Popular  as  Henry  the  Sixth  was,  there  is  no  recogni- 
tion in  the  Diary  of  Shaksper's  connection  with  its  author- 
ship; and  no  entry  appears  anywhere  therein  indicating 
that  he  was  paid  or  to  be  paid  any  sum  of  money  for  the 
sale  of  the  play  to  the  company. 

The  Taming  of  a  Shrew  was  acted  on  the  11th  of  June, 
1594,  as  shown  by  the  following  entry: 

"11  of  June  1594  R'd  at  the  tamynge  of  a  Shrewe 
IX  s." 

Collier  appends  to  this  entry  the  following  note:  "No 
doubt  the  old  Taming  of  a  Shrew,  printed  in  1594,  and 
recently  reprinted  by  the  Shakespeare  Society  under  the 
care  of  Mr.  Amyot  from  the  sole  existing  copy  in  the 
library  of  the  Duke  of  Devonshire." 


♦  SHAKSPER   HAS   NO    PLACE   IN   HENSLOWE's   DIARY.      43 

But  who  wrote  The  Taming  of  a  Shrew  printed  in 
1594,  and  who  wrote  the  Titus  Andronicus,  Henry  the 
Fifth,  Henry  the  Sixth,  or  King  Lear  referred  to  in  the 
Diary?  Neither  Colher  nor  any  of  the  Shaksper  com- 
mentators make  any  claim  to  their  authorship  in  behalf 
of  William  Shaksper.  Since  these  plays  have  the  same 
names  as  those  included  in  the  Folio  of  1623,  the  pre- 
sumption is  that  they  are  the  same  plays  until  the  con- 
trary is  shown.  Of  course,  it  may  be  shown  either  that 
those  in  the  Folio  are  entirely  different,  except  in  name, 
or  that  these  plays  were  revised,  improved,  and  dressed 
by  some  one  whom  they  called  Shakespeare. 

I  think  that  the  Henslowe  Diary  shows  also  on  pages 
91,  210,  240,  241,  and  276  that  the  comedy  of  Love's 
Labor's  Lost  was  acted  at  Henslowe's  theatre,  most  proba- 
bly the  Rose  Theatre,  by  the  Lord  Admiral  and  Lord 
Pembroke's  men,  on  the  second  day  of  November,  1597. 
The  name  of  the  play  is  spelled  in  various  ways  in  the 
Diary,  as  Burone,  Beroune,  Burbon,  and  Borbonne. 

The  entry  on  page  240  is  as  follows:  ''Lent  unto  John 
Ducke  the  25  of  Septembr  1602  to  buy  a  blacke  sewt  of 
satten  for  the  play  of  Burone  the  some  of  VII."  As  to 
this  entry,  the  editor  makes  the  following  note:  "In  the 
History  of  English  Dramatic  Poetry  and  the  Stage  iii,  95, 
it  is  suggested  that  this  entry  and  others  may  refer  to 
Chapman's  Byron's  Conspiracy  and  Tragedy  printed  in 
1608,  but  this  is  questionable  on  a  comparison  of  dates. 
See  Collier's  Shakespeare  1,  p.  209,  where  it  is  shown  that 
Chapman's  two  plays  have  not  reached  us  as  they  were 
originally  written,  in  consequence  of  the  remonstrance  of 
the  French  Ambassador  against  certain  incidents  in 
them." 


44  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

The  next  entry  in  the  Diary,  at  page  241,  helps  to  iden- 
tify the  play.  "Layd  owt  at  the  apoyntmente  of  the 
companye,  to  macke  a  scafowld  and  bare  for  the  play  of 
Berowne  and  Carpenters'  wages  14  s." 

This  indicates  that  there  was  a  play  or  performance 
within  the  play  which  Henslowe  calls  Berowne,  as  there 
actually  is  in  Love's  Labor's  Lost,  namely,  in  the  presen- 
tation of  the  side  show  by  Armado,  Costard,  Nathaniel, 
and  the  rest  of  the  Nine  Worthies.  A  scaffold  and  bar 
are  meant  by  the  terms  "scafowld  and  bare,"  and  by  the 
word  "Berowne"  Henslowe,  this  rich  murderer  of  the 
King's  English,  probably  meant  to  name  the  chief  char- 
acter "Biron,"  in  Love's  Labor's  Lost.  This  opinion  of 
mine  seems  to  be  confirmed  by  the  second  note  which 
the  learned  Verplanck,  who  edited  an  excellent  edition 
of  the  plays,  appends  to  the  first  scene  of  act  one. 
"Biron,"  he  says,  "is  in  all  the  old  editions  printed 
'Berowne,'  which  Rowe  altered  to  'Biron,'  as  the  tradi- 
tionary pronunciation  of  that  noble  name  had  in  his  time 
still  remained  as  in  Shakespeare's.  The  verse  shows  that 
it  is  not  a  misprint,  but  the  pronunciation  of  the  poet 
himself  and  his  times.  It  is  'to  be  pronounced  with  the 
accent  on  the  last  syllable."  Upon  examination  of  the 
old  editions  it  will  be  found  that  Verplanck  was  right. 
"Biron"  in  all  of  them  is  printed  "Berowne,"  which 
Rowe  took  it  upon  himself  in  after  years  to  change  to 
Biron.  Henslowe,  therefore,  did  not  get  very  far  out  of 
the  way  in  his  spelling  of  the  word. 

If  I  am  right  in  my  opinion  as  to  the  identification  of 
the  play  by  the  term  used  by  Henslowe,  the  play  was 
acted  in  1597,  and  it  is  certainly  known  that  it  was  pub- 
lished in   1598.     That  Henslowe's  company  owned  this 


SHAKSPER    HAS    XO    PLACE    IX    HEXSLOWE's    DIARY.      45 

play  as  late  as  March  3,  1598,  is  shown  on  page  276  of 
the  Diary. 

Richard  the  Third  was  probably  brought  out  on  Decem- 
ber 31,  1593,  although  Henslowe  spells  it  "Richard  the 
Confesser"  and  on  the  next  day  he  calls  it  "Bucking- 
ham." In  the  mention  of  Berowne  or  of  this  play  in  the 
Diary  there  is  no  reference  whatever  to  William  Shaksper. 
If  Shaksper  had  been  a  writer  of  plays,  and  if  he  had 
written  any  of  the  plays  above  named,  his  talents  and 
ability  would  have  been  appreciated  by  Henslowe,  and 
he  would  undoubtedly  have  been  employed  by  him  to 
write  and  revise  plays,  so  that  his  name  would  have 
appeared  in  the  Diary.  That  Henslowe  was  quick  to 
recognize  talent  is  evident  from  the  fact  that  Drayton, 
Wilson,  Monday,  and  Hathaway  received  from  him  a 
monetary  gift  after  the  first  presentation  of  Sir  John 
Oldcastle,  in  addition  to  their  pay;  and  John  Day  and 
Thomas  Dekker  received  similar  presents:  while  suppers 
were  given  by  him  to  them  from  time  to  time.  But 
William  Shaksper  was  wholly  ignored  by  Henslowe. 
CoUier,  on  page  14  of  the  introduction  to  the  Diary,  utters 
the  following  lamentation:  "Recollecting  that  the  names 
of  nearly  all  the  other  plaj'-poets  of  the  time  occur,  we 
can  not  but  wonder  that  that  of  Shaksper  is  not  met  with 
in  any  part  of  the  manuscript.  The  notices  of  Ben  Jon- 
son,  Dekker,  Chettle,  Marston,  Wilson,  Drayton,  Monday, 
Heyvi'ood,  Middleton,  Porter,  Hathaway,  Rankins,  Web- 
ster, Day,  Rowley,  Haughton,  &c.,  are  frequent,  because 
they  were  aU  writers  for  Henslowe's  theatre;  but  we 
must  wait  at  all  events  for  the  discovery  of  some  other 
similar  record,  before  we  can  produce  corresponding 
memoranda  regarding  Shaksper  and  his  productions." 


46  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

It  is  quite  clear  to  any  unprejudiced  seeker  after  the 
truth  that  Henslowe  could  not  have  obtained  from  the 
author  or  authors  of  Hamlet,  King  Lear,  Titus  Androni- 
cus,  or  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew,  the  title  to  and  owner- 
ship of  such  plays  or  of  any  of  them  without  paying  for 
them,  and  more  especially  he  could  not  without  a  good 
consideration  have  got  them  from  Shaksper,  whose  busi- 
ness transactions  all  show  that  in  money  matters  he  was 
a  tight-fisted  fellow.  Yet  during  the  interval  of  time 
during  which  the  Shakespeare  plays  appeared,  namely, 
from  1590  to  1609,  William  Shaksper  had  no  place  in  the 
Diary  of  Philip  Henslowe — a  book  which  contains  minute 
and  valuable  information  respecting  the  history  and  con- 
dition of  the  early  drama  and  stage  between  the  years 
above  named,  during  the  whole  of  which  period  Collier, 
without  the  slightest  foundation  of  fact  for  his  state- 
ment, guesses  that  ''Shaksper  was  exercising  his  un- 
equalled powers  for  the  public  instruction  and  amusement." 

While  Collier  was  compelled  to  admit  that  there  is  no 
mention  whatever  of  William  Shaksper  in  the  Diary,  yet 
he  felt  it  to  be  his  duty  to  get  his  idol's  name  into  the 
copy  published  by  the  Shakespeare  Society.  He  accom- 
plished this  by  means  of  notes  in  which  he  contrived  to 
insert  a  reference  to  Shakespeare. 

The  insertion  of  these  notes  editorially  enabled  him  to 
incorporate  the  name  of  William  Shakespeare  in  the  index 
to  the  Diary;  so  that  while  William  Shaksper  has  no  place 
in  Henslowe's  Diary,  he  has  been  well  provided  for  by 
Collier  in  his  index  to  the  printed  copy  of  the  manuscript. 

Not  only  is  it  true  that  William  Shaksper  has  no  place 
in  Henslowe's  Diary,  but  it  is  also  a  fact  well  worthy  of 
consideration  that  he  has  no   place  in  Edward  Alleyn's 


SHAKSPER   HAS   NO   PLACE   IN   HENSLOWE's   DIARY.      47 

memoirs  or  accounts.  The  reader  will  remember  that 
Alleyn  was  not  only  an  actor  but  a  theatrical  proprietor, 
and  that  he  was  the  founder  of  Dulwich  College.  His 
papers  and  memoirs,  which  were  published  in  1841  and 
1843,  contain  the  names  of  all  the  notable  actors  and 
play-poets  of  Shaksper's  time,  as  well  as  of  every  person 
who  helped  directly  or  indirectly  or  who  paid  out  money 
or  received  money  in  connection  with  the  production  of 
the  many  plays  at  the  Blackfriars  Theatre,  the  Fortune, 
and  other  theatres.  His  accounts  were  very  minutely 
stated,  and  a  careful  perusal  of  the  two  volumes  shows 
that  there  is  not  one  mention  of  such  a  poet  as  William 
Shaksper  in  his  list  of  actors,  poets,  and  theatrical  com- 
rades. 


CHAPTER  V. 

SHAKSPER  COMMENDED  NO  CONTEMPORARY. 


ti 


Our  praises  are  our  wages.'' 

—The  Winter's  Tale,  i,  2. 


It  was  the  universal  custom  in  England  during  the 
period  when  Shaksper  lived  for  poets  and  prose  writers 
to  praise  the  writings  of  contemporary  authors,  either  in 
verse  or  prose.  If  the  reader  will  turn  to  the  works  of 
Thomas  Heywood,  Ben  Jonson,  George  Chapman,  Thomas 
Middleton,  Michael  Drayton,  John  Marston,  Thomas 
Dekker,  or  any  of  the  distinguished  writers  of  that  era, 
he  will  discover  that  such  commendatory  verses  invari- 
ably accompany  the  preface  or  dedication  when  the  book 
issued  from  the  press. 

I  will  give  a  brief  illustration  from  the  works  of  Hey- 
wood. His  works  are  prefaced  by  the  commendation  of 
three  contemporaries.     One  of  them  begins  thus: 

"  To  his  worthy  friend,  the  author  Thomas  Heywood. 

Heywood,  when  men  weigh  truly  what  thou  art. 
How  the  whole  frame  of  learning  claims  a  part 
In  thy  deep  apprehension;  and  then  see, 
To  knowledge  added  so  much  industry; 
Who  will  deny  thee  the  best  palm  and  bays? 
And  that  to  name  thee  to  himself  is  praise." 

In  further  illustration  of  this  custom,  the  poet  Drayton 
wrote  commendatory  verses  for  Chapman's  "Hesiod," 
Tuke's  "Discourse  against  the  painting  and  tincturing  of 


SHAKSPER    COMMENDED    NO    CONTEMPORARY.  49 

Women,"  Monday's  "Primaleon  of  Greece/'  and  his  own 
compositions  were  in  a  like  manner  commended  by  Browne, 
Sir  William  Alexander,  Drummond,  and  other  contem- 
poraries and  friends.  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  received 
for  their  plays  poetical  commendation  and  gave  such 
commendation  in  courteous  exchange  to  their  associates 
in  the  art  of  poesy.  Marston  and  Dekker  did  the  same, 
and  Ben  Jonson,  who  was  regarded  as  morose,  surly,  and 
envious,  took  delight  in  praising  the  works  of  others  and 
in  being  praised  for  his  own.  The  celebrated  poem 
ascribed  to  Charles  Best  was  commended  in  verse  by 
Ben  Jonson,  George  Chapman,  William  Browne,  Robert 
Daborne,  and  George  Wither.  I  need  not  multiply  illus- 
trations. It  w'as  the  common  custom  of  the  poets  of 
that  era. 

Let  us  consider  for  a  moment  how  the  learned  com- 
mentators picture  Shaksper.  He  is  called  by  them  ''Our 
pleasant  Willy,"  and  "  the  gentle  Shepherd,"  and  they 
describe  him  as  the  intimate  friend  and  companion  of 
Ben  Jonson  in  his  revelries  and  of  Burbage  in  his  amours. 
They  picture  him  as  a  man  of  amiable  and  generous  dis- 
position and  one  who  would  naturally  interest  himself  in 
the  advancement  of  his  friends,  and  especially  of  the  young 
men  who  were  aspiring  to  be  poets  or  dramatists.  Collier 
says  that  "he  must  have  been  of  a  lively  and  compan- 
ionable disposition;  that  we  can  readily  believe  that  when 
any  of  his  old  associates  of  the  stage,  whether  authors  or 
actors,  came  to  Stratford,  they  found  a  hearty  welcome 
and  free  entertainment  at  his  house."  If  Shaksper  was 
such  a  companionable  and  amiable  fellow,  and  if  he  was 
the  writer  of  plays  and  poems,  he  would  naturally  have 
followed  the  universal  custom  of  obliging  and  gratifying 


50  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

his  writer  friends  with  commendatory  verses  to  accom- 
pany their  works.  But  we  look  in  vain  for  even  one 
such  act  of  courtesy  and  commendation.  The  great 
writers  and  poets  of  that  era  wrote  and  pubhshed  books, 
and  their  plays  were  printed  from  time  to  time  while 
Shaksper  lived,  but  Shaksper's  name  is  not  found  among 
the  commenders.  AMiether  a  poet  in  those  days  was  an 
ill-natured  churl  or  a  gentleman,  he  could  not  very  well 
refuse  the  request,  if  asked  by  a  brother  poet,  for  a  short 
commendatory  stanza  or  two  to  give  standing  to  the  issue 
of  his  brain.  And  if  Shaksper  had  been  a  poet  at  all,  if 
he  had  been  on  such  familiar  terms  mth  Beaumont, 
Fletcher,  Jonson,  Chapman,  Dekker,  and  the  other  poetical 
frequenters  of  the  ^lermaid  tavern  as  his  admirers  assert 
that  he  was,  these  poets  or  some  of  them  would  naturally 
have  solicited  a  few  lines  from  Shaksper  if  he  was  the 
honey-tongued,  heaven-inspired  king  of  poets.  The  plea 
of  Shaksper's  indifference  is  the  only  refuge  and  defense 
of  the  Shaksperites  against  these  assaults.  He  was 
indifferent,  they  assert,  to  praise  or  dispraise.  That  is 
the  very  ground  of  the  charge  the  seekers  after  the  truth 
make  against  him.  He  was  unquestionably  indifferent, 
and  naturally  so,  for  the  reason  that  he  was  not  a  poet 
and  he  was  too  ignorant  to  compose  a  decent  and  readable 
conmaendation,  either  in  verse  or  prose.  He  may  have 
had,  and  probably  did  have,  all  the  business  capacity  of 
Philip  Henslowe,  who  associated  with  and  gave  suppers 
to  the  poets  who  sold  the  coinage  of  their  brains  to  him, 
but  no  poet  would  have  ever  asked  Henslowe  for  com- 
mendatory verses;  and  if  Shaksper's  indifference  was 
founded  upon  ignorance,  he  could  not  give  and  certainly 
would  not  receive  commendatorv  verses. 


SHAKSPER    COMMENDED    NO    CONTEMPORARY.  51 

There  is  one  thing  which  the  Shaksper  worshipers  do 
not  consider  and  are  unable  to  answer,  and  that  is  the 
potent  argument  against  their  indifference  theory  which 
the  real  writer  or  writers  of  the  plays  advances  against 
them.     The  real  Shakespeare  says : 

"  Canst  thou  the  conscience  lack, 
To  think  I  shall  lack  friends?" 

— Timon  of  Athens,  ii,  2. 

"The  friends  thou  hast,  and  their  adoption  tried, 
Grapple  them  to  thy  soul  with  hoops  of  steel." 

—Hamlet,  i,  3. 

"Is  all  forgot? 
All  school-days'  friendship,  childhood,  innocence?" 

—Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  iii,  2. 

"What  friendship  may  I  do  thee?" 

—Timon  of  Athens,  iv,  3. 

"A  friend  should  bear  his  friend's  infirmities." 

—Julius  Csesar,  iv,  3. 

"  I  have  heard  you  say 
That  we  shall  see  and  know  our  friends  in  heaven." 

—King  John,  iii,  4. 

And  many  other  instances  might  be  cited  from  the 
plays  of  the  value  given  to  friendship  and  courtesy  by  the 
writer  or  writers  of  the  plays. 

AVhether  the  custom  of  the  poets  of  that  era  as  to 
commendation  was  followed  for  the  purpose  of  helping 
the  sale  of  the  book  or  as  a  mere  matter  of  courtesy  and 
gratulation,  it  was  the  prevailing  custom  among  the  poets 
and  writers  of  the  time;  and  if  William  Shaksper  was  a 
poet  and  dramatist,  and  if  he  was  imbued  with  the  spirit 


52  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

of  courtesy  and  gentleness  which  the  Shaksper  idolaters 
audaciously  and  without  ^va^^ant  lavish  upon  him,  he 
would  certainly  have  honored  his  contemporaries  with  a 
stanza  or  two  at  least  of  heaven-bred  poesy  or  a  few  lines 
of  complimentary  prose  in  praise  of  their  occasional 
efforts  to  please  the  public.  His  admirers  claim  that  he 
was  cheek  by  jowl  with  Ben  Jonson,  Drayton,  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher,  and  all  the  great  T\Titers  of  that  epoch, 
and  yet  no  man  has  ever  produced  one  line  or  one  word 
even  from  William  Shaksper  in  praise  or  commendation 
of  the  works  of  any  man  who  was  a  contemporary.  Dur- 
ing Shaksper's  life,  prose  and  poetical  commendations 
circulated  freely  among  the  real  poets  and  dramatists, 
but  ^^  illiam  Shaksper  praised  no  one,  criticised  no  one, 
extended  courtesy  to  no  one,  and  the  readers  of  the  works 
of  the  great  men  of  that  day  will  look  in  vain  for  any 
WTitten  or  printed  word  to  show  that  Shaksper  ever 
wrote  a  sentence  either  in  commendation  or  disparage- 
ment of  anybody.  One  can  understand  that  if  a  learned 
man  is  saturnine,  selfish,  and  sullen,  although  he  can  not 
escape  from  them,  he  may  nevertheless  despise  the  cour- 
tesies and  conventionalities  of  society  or  of  those  in  his 
owTi  profession  or  occupation;  but  if  he  is  truthfully 
credited  with  gentleness,  affability,  and  the  power  to 
appreciate  the  efforts  of  his  associates,  he  certainly  would 
have  been,  in  such  a  case,  the  very  last  man  to  abstain 
from  commending  their  literary  efforts. 

If  one  man  wrote  the  Shakespeare  plays  and  poems, 
that  man,  whoever  he  was,  must  have  had  literary  asso- 
ciates and  friends;  he  must  have  been  more  or  less 
a<;quainted  with  the  noble  and  learned  men  and  women 
of  that  period;  he  must  have  been  at  least  in  touch  with 


SHAKSPER    COMMENDED    NO    CONTEMPORARY.  53 

such  of  his  accomphshed  fellow  men  as  were  engaged  in 
the  same  pursuits  in  life,  or  with  those  whom  he  looked 
up  to  as  the  encouragers  and  patrons  of  his  literary  efforts. 
Such  a  brilliant  and  learned  writer  could  not  shut  him- 
self up  from  society  and  avoid  all  communion  with  his 
fellow  men. 

Hence  it  is  a  circumstance  measurably  tending  to 
weaken  the  Shaksper  claim  to  authorship  that  nowhere 
in  all  the  history  or  the  literature  of  the  time  in  which 
he  lived  can  be  found  any  commendatory  epistle  either 
in  prose  or  verse  addressed  by  him  to  any  poet  or  prose 
writer  of  the  period.  If  such  a  written  or  printed  com- 
mendation could  be  found,  and  if  Shaksper  had  been  a 
man  of  letters  competent  to  write  a  play,  the  fact  of  such 
a  commendatory  letter  written  by  him  would  be  an  irre- 
sistible argument  in  his  favor.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
fact  that  no  such  commendatory  letter  exists  in  manu- 
script or  book  form  is  a  very  strong  argument  against 
the  ability  of  Shaksper  to  write  a  play  at  all. 

It  is,  of  course,  clear  to  the  student  of  English  litera- 
ture, and  especially  to  those  who  have  waded  through 
the  guesses  and  hypotheses  of  Shaksper's  idolaters  that 
during  his  lifetime  no  writer  addressed  any  commenda- 
tory verses  or  prose  writings  to  accompany  any  book  or 
publication  authorized  by  him.  If  any  comedy,  tragedy, 
history,  or  book  on  any  special  or  miscellaneous  subject 
can  be  found  issued  in  Shaksper's  lifetime  by  his  author- 
ization, with  any  words  therein  of  commendation  of 
Shaksper  from  any  poet  or  prose  writer  of  the  time,  it 
would  be  hailed  with  delight  by  the  reading  public  as 
confirmatory  of  the  disputed  Shaksper  claim,  and  it  would 
be  the  very  best  evidence  of  Shaksper's  ability  to  write 


54  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

a  play  or  poem.  That  none  such  can  be  found  after  the 
exliaustive  search  of  several  centuries  is  a  presmnption 
at  least  against  that  ability. 

In  this  connection  what  Emerson  said  about  the  failure 
of  the  great  men  of  that  era  to  find  out  such  a  person  as 
Shaksper  is  worthy  of  consideration. 

"  If  it  need  wit  to  know  wit,  according  to  the  proverb, 
Shakespeare's  time  should  be  capable  of  recognizing  it. 
Sir  Henry  Wotton  was  born  four  years  after  Shakespeare, 
and  died  twenty- three  years  after  him,  and  I  find  among 
his  correspondents  and  acquaintances  the  following  per- 
sons: Theodore  Beza,  Isaac  Casaubon,  Sir  Philip  Sidney, 
the  Earl  of  Essex,  Lord  Bacon,  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  John 
Milton,  Sir  Henry  Vane,  Isaac  Walton,  Dr.  Donne,  Abra- 
ham Cowley,  Bellarmine,  Charles  Cotton,  John  Pym,  John 
Hales,  Kepler,  Vieta,  Albericus  Gentilis,  Paul  Sarpi, 
Arminius — with  all  of  whom  exists  some  token  of  his 
having  communicated,  without  enumerating  many  others 
whom  doubtless  he  (Wotton)  saw — Shakespeare,  Spenser, 
Jonson,  Beaumont,  Massinger,  two  Herberts,  Marlowe, 
Chapman,  and  the  rest.  Since  the  constellation  of  great 
men  who  appeared  in  Greece  in  the  time  of  Pericles,  there 
was  never  any  such  society;  yet  their  genius  failed  them 
to  find  out  the  best  head  in  the  universe.  Our  poet's 
mask  was  impenetrable." 


CHAPTER  VI. 

SHAKSPER   LEFT   NO   LETTERS  AND   HAD   NO   LIBRARY. 

"  Knowing  I  loved  my  books,  he  furnished  me 
From  my  own  library  with  volumes  that 
I  prize  above  my  dukedom." 

—The  Tempest,  i,  2. 

A  literary  man,  and  especially  one  who  is  credited  by 
the  admiring  public  with  the  authorship  of  the  histories, 
comedies,  and  tragedies  which  the  literary  world  so  much 
esteems,  could  not  transact  business,  either  literary  or 
otherwise,  without  writing  letters  to  his  friends,  gentle  or 
simple,  admirers,  kinsmen,  tradesmen,  patrons,  fellows 
of  his  craft  or  publishers.  In  Shaksper's  time,  Ben  Jon- 
son,  Thomas  Dekker,  Thomas  Heywood,  Michael  Dray- 
ton, John  Webster,  John  Marston,  Francis  Beaumont, 
John  Fletcher,  and  others  wTote  to  one  another  and  to 
friends,  acquaintances,  and  patrons,  and  their  epistles 
and  wTitings  have  been  found;  even  Dekker's  letters 
from  the  debtors'  prison  have  been  preserved.  But  in 
the  case  of  Shaksper,  the  most  persistent  and  careful 
search  for  any  writing,  epistolary  or  otherwise,  from  his 
pen  or  pencil,  has  been  unavailing.  Letters  have  been 
manufactured  in  order  to  minister  to  the  cravings  of 
hungry  admirers  and  devotees,  but  a  genuine  letter  from 
William  Shaksper  has  never  been  discovered;  and  as  will 
be  shown  hereafter,  none  can  be  discovered,  for  the  evi- 
dence based  on  his  signatures  shows  that  he  could  not 
write  a  letter. 


56  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Diligent  search  has  evolved  one  letter,  and  only  one,  to 
him,  an  exact  copy  of  which  is  as  follows: 

"Loveinge  contreyman,  I  am  bolde  of  yow,  as  of  a 
ffrende,  craveinge  yowr  helpe  with  xxx.ll.  vppon  Mr. 
Bushells  and  my  securytee,  or  Mr.  Myttons  with  me. 
Mr.  Rosswell  is  nott  come  to  London  as  yeate,  and  I 
have  especiall  cawse.  Yow  shall  ffrende  me  muche  in 
helping  me  out  of  all  the  debettes  I  owe  in  London,  I 
thancke  God,  and  muche  wuiet  my  ]\Iynde,  which  wolde 
nott  be  indebted.  I  am  nowe  towardes  the  Cowrte,  in 
hope  of  answer  for  the  dispatche  of  my  buysenes.  Yow 
shall  nether  loase  creddytt  nor  monney  by  me,  the  Lorde 
W3dlinge;  and  now  butt  perswade  yowrselfe  soe,  as  I 
hope,  and  yow  shall  nott  need  to  feare,  butt,  with  all 
heartie  thanckfulleness,  I  wyll  holde  my  tyme,  and  con- 
tent yowr  ffrende,  and  yf  we  bargaine  farther,  yow  shall 
be  the  pai-master  yowrselfe.  My  tyme  biddes  me  hastene 
to  an  ende,  and  soe  I  committ  this  (to)  yowr  care  and 
hope  of  yowr  helpe.  I  fear  I  shall  nott  be  backe  thys 
night  ffrom  the  Cowrte.  Haste.  The  Lorde  be  with 
yow  and  with  vs  all,  Amen!  ffrom  the  Bell  in  Carter 
Lane,  the  25  October,  1598. 

Yowrs  in  all  kyndenes. 

Rye.  Quyney. 
To  my  loveinge  good  ffrend  and  contreymann  Mr.   Wm. 
Shackespere  deliver  thees." 

This  letter  tends  to  show  that  Shaksper,  like  the  igno- 
rant Henslowe,  was  a  money-lender,  and  it  throws  no 
light  whatever  upon  his  literary  ability.  No  man  can  be 
a  great  writer  without  having  friends  to  correspond  with. 
He  can  not  escape  from  letter-writing.  Some  of  his 
correspondence,  however  trivial,  will  be  found  in  some 


SHAKSPER  LEFT  NO  LETTERS  AND  HAD  XO  LIBRARY.      57 

one's  possession.     Not  a  scrap,  not  a  word  from  Shaksper 
has  ever  been  found. 

Pope  gives  in  the  following  lines  expression  to  the 
universal  idea  as  to  the  usefulness  and  pleasure  imparted 
by  letters: 

"The}'  live,  the}'  speak,  they  breathe  what  love  inspires; 
Warm  from  the  soul,  and  faithful  to  its  fires; 
The  virgin's  wish  without  her  fears  impart, 
Excuse  the  blush,  and  pour  out  all  the  heart, 
Speed  the  soft  intercourse  from  soul  to  soul. 
And  waft  a  sigh  from  Indus  to  the  pole." 

But  why  go  to  Pope,  when  the  real  Shakespeare  says: 

"Let  me  hear  from  thee  by  letters 
Of  thy  success  in  love,  and  what  news  else 
Betideth  here  in  absence  of  thy  friend." 

—Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  i,  1. 

"For  often  have  you  writ  to  her,  and  she,  in  modesty. 
Or  else  for  want  of  idle  tune,  could  not  again  reply." 

—Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  ii,  1. 

"We  shall  have  a  rare  letter  from  him." 

—Twelfth  Night,  iii,  2. 

"  Here  is  a  letter  will  say  somewhat." 

—Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  iv,  5. 

The  plays  are  full  of  incidents  connected  with  letters 
and  with  reference  to  correspondence  b}^  letters.  The 
literary  public  have  craved  and  sought  ever}^'here  for  a 
corroboratory  line  by  wa}^  of  letter  or  merest  fragment 
of  note  from  the  real  Shakespeare.  Ireland  invented 
some  to  please  the  popular  taste,  and  the  people  generally 
and  even  the  critics  were  gulled  by  his  forgeries  for  a  little 
while.  If  there  could  only  be  found,  for  example,  a  letter 
from  the  divine  William  to  his  beloved  wife  explaining 


58  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

satisfactorily  why  he  bequeathed  to  her  his  second-best 
bed,  what  a  treasure  it  w^ould  be  to  the  literary  world! 
The  letter  might  for  instance  say,  to  borrow  Collier's 
language,  that  this  ''second-best  bed"  was  that  in  which 
the  husband  and  wife  had  slept  when  he  was  in  Strat- 
ford earlier  in  life  and  every  night  since  his  retirement 
from  the  metropolis ;  and  that  as  the  best  bed  was  reserved 
for  visitors  he  thought  that  she  would  be  better  pleased 
with  the  old  bed;  or  he  might  have  said,  as  one  devotee 
explains  it,  that  he  gave  and  bequeathed  it  to  her  because 
it  was  the  bed  which  they  bought  and  used  when  they 
were  married;  and  that  when  left  a  widow  she  could 
preserve  it  as  a  memorial. 

Skottowe,  in  his  Life  of  Shakespeare,  Note  P,  aptly 
says  as  to  this  magnificent  bequest,  ""W^ien  Shaksper 
made  his  will,  his  wife  was  at  first  forgotten  altogether, 
and  only  became  entitled  to  her  legacy  under  the  benefit 
of  an  interlineation.  To  those  in  search  of  subjects  for 
controversy  the  temptation  was  irresistible.  Malone 
acknowledges  the  bard's  contempt  for  his  wife,  and  think- 
ing it  derogatory  to  his  penetration  not  to  be  able  to 
account  for  it,  makes  him  jealous  of  her.  Steevens,  rightly 
enough,  defends  the  lady,  but,  forgetting  for  once  the 
knowledge  of  his  life,  appears  quite  unconscious  that 
husbands  as  well  as  wives  are  occasionally  false.  The 
conversion  of  the  bequest  of  an  inferior  piece  of  furniture 
into  a  mark  of  peculiar  tenderness — 

'  The  very  bed  that  on  his  bridal  night 
Received  him  to  the  arms  of  Belvidera' 

is  not  much  in  the  usual  style  of  this  very  knowing  com- 
mentator."    He  takes  it  for  granted,  without  any  proof, 


SHAKSPER  LEFT  NO  LETTERS  AND  HAD  NO  LIBRARY.      59 

that  this  famous  second-best  bed  was  in  reahty  the  nup- 
tial couch. 

Old  John  Hayward,  a  contemporary  of  Shaksper,  and 
the  same  John  whose  body  Queen  Elizabeth  felt  inclined 
to  rack,  furnishes  a  better  and  more  practical  key  to  the 
discovery  of  the  true  intent  and  meaning  of  Shaksper' s 
will  in  this  respect  than  either  Collier  or  Steevens,  for  in 
his  will,  dated  March  30,  1626,  he  uses  this  language,  "I 
give  to  my  wife  the  bed  wherein  she  lieth  with  all  things 
pertaining  thereto,  and  two  other  of  the  meanest  beds 
held  for  servants,"  and  then  he  adds,  "in  regard  of  her 
unquiet  life  and  small  respect  towards  me,  a  great  deal 
too  much." 

Or  if  there  could  only  be  found  a  letter  from  Shaksper 
to  his  dearly  beloved  daughter  Judith  after  her  marriage, 
regretting  her  inability  to  write  and  explaining  to  her 
how  he  sought  to  send  her  to  school  when  she  was  at  the 
proper  age,  but  that  she  was  then  very  willful  and  way- 
ward, refusing  either  to  stay  at  school  or  to  study,  and 
that  therefore  neither  she  nor  her  husband  Thomas  Quiney 
could  blame  him  for  her  inability  to  write  her  own  name. 

Or  if  there  could  be  found  a  letter  from  his  wife  to  him 
explaining,  for  the  world's  benefit,  why  the  marriage 
license  was  taken  out  in  the  name  of  Anne  \\niatley  of 
Temple  Grafton  and  the  marriage  bond  in  the  name  of 
Anne  Hathaway  of  Stratford-on-Avon. 

Or  if  there  could  only  be  found  a  letter  from  him  to 
any  one  of  his  dear  friends,  describing  his  library  and 
specifying  the  books  which  he  most  delighted  in  reading 
and  studying. 

As  to  being  the  possessor  of  a  library,  the  facts  tend 
to  negative  the  ownership  in  him  of  any  books  or  manu- 


60  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

scripts  whatever.  And  what  are  the  facts?  The  reader 
must  go  to  his  will  for  them.  The  will  was  prepared  in 
January,  1616,  and  written  by  Francis  Collins,  a  solicitor 
of  Warwick,  but  it  was  not  signed  by  Shaksper  until 
March  25,  1616.  He  gave  among  other  things  to  Judith 
Quiney,  his  younger  daughter,  his  broad  silver  gilt  bowl, 
and  to  his  wife  his  second-best  bed  with  the  furniture, 
but  he  makes  no  mention  whatever  of  books  or  manu- 
scripts, and  no  directions  whatever  are  given  as  to  the 
publication  of  any  writings. 

From  the  absence  of  all  reference  to  books  in  Shaks- 
per's  will,  it  may  safely  be  inferred  that  he  was  not  the 
owner  of  any.  This  presumption  is  aided  also  by  the 
further  fact  that  the  Halls,  who  were  his  residuary  lega- 
tees, made  no  reference  on  the  sale  of  Hall's  books  to  any 
books  of  Shaksper;  and  Halliwell-Phillips,  who  was  a 
believer  in  Shaksper's  authorship  of  the  plays,  says  about 
the  library  "that  Shaksper  ever  owned  one  at  any  time 
of  his  life  is  exceedingly  improbable." 

Naturally  a  man  takes  a  pride  and  very  special  interest 
in  his  own  literary  offspring;  and  particularly  so  if  he  is 
rich  enough  to  provide  in  his  last  will  for  its  proper  pres- 
ervation. But  Shaksper,  although  rich  enough,  took  no 
interest  in  any  literary  production  attributed  to  him,  and 
made  no  provision  either  by  will  or  otherwise  for  the  care 
of  any  manuscript  and  the  circulation  thereof  by  publi- 
cation. Indeed  Shaksper  never  claimed,  direct!}^  or  indi- 
rectly, that  he  ever  wrote  a  single  play. 

Here  again  it  seems  proper  to  produce  evidence  in 
support  of  my  theory,  from  irrefragable  sources.  The 
author  of  The  Tempest,  in  addition  to  the  words  which 
I  have  placed  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter,  said  also. 


SHAKSPER  LEFT  NO  LETTERS  AND  HAD  NO  LIBRARY.      61 

"  My  library 
Was  dukedom  large  enough." 

—The  Tempest,  i,  2. 

"  Ah  boy !  Cornelia  never  with  more  care 
Read  to  her  sons,  than  she  hath  read  to  thee 
Sweet  poetry  and  Tully's  Orator. 
Some  book  there  is  that  she  desires  to  see; 
Which  is  it,  girl,  of  these?     Open  them,  boy — 
But  thou  art  deeper  read,  and  better  skill'd, 
Come  and  take  choice  of  all  my  library." 

— Titus  Andronicus,  iv,  1. 

"We  turned  o'er  many  books  together." 

— Letter  in  Merchant  of  Venice,  iv,  1. 

"Sir,  he  hath  never  fed  of  the  dainties  that  are  bred 
in  a  book." 

—Love's  Labor's  Lost,  4, 1. 

Old  Chaucer  knew  what  a  scholar  craved  when  he 
wrote : 

"  For  he  would  rather  have  at  his  bed  head 
A  twentv  books,  clothed  in  black  or  red 
Of  Aristotle  or  his  philosophy 
Than  robes  rich,  rebeck  or  saltery." 

Taking,  now,  the  sad  admission  of  Halliwell-Phillips 
that  it  is  probable  that  Shaksper  never  owned  a  library 
at  any  time  in  his  life,  and  couple  that  admission  with 
the  fact  that  he  is  admitted  to  have  been  a  rich  man, 
and  it  follows  that  there  is  a  very  strong  presumption 
from  these  facts  that,  however  shrewd  in  business  affairs 
he  may  have  been,  he  was  an  illiterate  fellow.  Who 
can  believe  that  an  ignoramus  could  be  divinely  inspired? 


62  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Appleton  Morgan  takes  very  positive  ground  against 
Shaksper's  literary  knowledge  on  the  basis  of  his  lack  of 
books.  On  page  266  of  his  ''Shakespearean  Myth"  he 
says: 

''But  even  if  Hamlet,  Othello,  King  Lear,  Macbeth, 
and  Julius  Csesar  could  have  been  produced  by  machin- 
ery, and  engrossed  currente  calamo  (so  that  the  author's 
first  draft  should  be  the  acting  copy  for  the  players), 
they  could  hardly  have  been  composed,  nowadays,  with- 
out a  library.  And  even  had  William  Shaksper  possessed 
an  encyclopedia  (such  as  were  first  invented  two  hundred 
years  or  so  after  his  funeral),  he  would  not  have  found  it 
inclusive  of  all  the  references  he  needed  for  these  five 
plays  alone.  They  can  not  be  studied  as  they  were  capable 
of  being  studied  by  Coleridge  and  Gervinus — without  a 
library.  And  yet  are  we  to  be  asked  to  believe  that  they 
were  composed  without  one,  in  the  days  when  such  a 
thing  as  a  dictionary  even  was  unknown?  Who  ever 
heard  of  William  Shaksper  in  his  library  pulling  down 
volumes,  dipping  into  folios,  peering  into  manuscripts, 
his  brain  in  throe  and  his  pen  in  labor,  weaving  the  warp 
and  woof  of  his  poetry  and  his  philosophy,  at  the  expense 
of  Greece  and  Rome  and  Egypt;  pillaging  alike  from 
tomes  of  Norsemen  lore  and  Southern  romance — for  the 
pastime  of  the  rabble  that  sang  bawdy  songs  and  swal- 
lowed beer  amid  the  straw  of  his  pit,  and  burned  juniper 
and  tossed  his  journey-actors  in  blankets? 

"It  is  always  interesting  to  read  of  the  habitudes  of 
authors — of  paper-saving  Pope  scribbling  his  Iliad  on  the 
backs  of  old  correspondence,  of  Spenser  by  his  fireside  in 
his  library  at  Kilcolman  Castle,  of  Scott  among  his  dogs, 
of  Gibbon  biting  at  the  peaches  that  hung  on  the  trees 


SHAKSPER  .LEFT  NO  LETTERS  AND  HAD  NO  LIBRARY.      63 

in  his  garden  at  Lausanne,  of  Schiller  declaiming  by 
mountain  brooksides  and  in  forest  paths,  of  Goldsmith 
in  his  garrets  and  his  jails.  Even  of  Chaucer,  dead  and 
buried  before  Shaksper  saw  the  light,  we  read  of  his 
studies  at  Cambridge,  his  call  to  the  bar  and  his  chambers 
in  the  Middle  Temple.  But  of  William  Shaksper — after 
ransacking  tradition,  gossip,  and  the  record,  save  and 
except  the  statement  of  Ben  Jonson  how  he  had  heard 
the  actor's  anecdote  about  his  never  blotting  his  lines, — 
not  a  word,  not  a  breath  can  be  foimd  to  connect  him 
with  or  surprise  him  in  any  agenc}"  or  emplo}Tnent  as  to 
the  composition  of  the  plays  we  insist  upon  calling  his — 
much  less  to  the  possession  of  a  single  book.  Had  we 
found  this  massive  draught  upon  antiquit}^  in  the  remains 
of  an  immortal  Milton  or  a  mortal  Tupper,  or  in  all  the 
range  of  letters  between,  we  should  not  have  failed  to 
presume  a  library.  Why  should  we  believe  that  William 
Shaksper  needed  none? — that  as  his  pen  ran,  he  never 
paused  to  lift  a  volume  from  the  shelf  to  refresh  or  verify 
his  marvelously  retentive  recollection?  There  was  no 
Astor  or  ^Mercantile  Library  around  the  corner  from  the 
Globe  or  the  Blackfriars  ui  those  days.  And  as  for  his 
possessions,  he  leaves  in  his  will  no  hint  of  book  or  library, 
much  less  of  the  literature  the  booksellers  had  taken  the 
liberty  of  christening  with  his  name!  Where  is  the 
scholar  who  glories  not  in  his  scholarship?  By  universal 
testimony,  the  highest  pleasure  which  an  author  draws 
from  his  own  completed  work,  the  pride  of  the  poet  in  his 
own  poems  is  their  chiefest  payment.  The  simple  fact 
which  stands  out  so  prominently  in  the  life  of  this  man 
that  nobody  can  gainsay  it — that  William  Shaksper  took 
neither  pride  nor  pleasure  in  any  of   the  works  which 


64  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

passed  current  with  the  rest  of  the  world  as  his,  might 
well  make  the  most  casual  student  of  these  days  suspi- 
cious of  a  claim  that,  among  his  other  accomplishments, 
William  Shaksper  was  an  author  at  all." 

While  Morgan's  reasoning  is  correct,  I  am  content  to 
claim  only  that  the  facts  shown  as  to  Shaksper's  lack  of 
a  library  form  a  strong  presumptive  link  in  the  chain  of 
presumptions  against  his  ability  to  compose  a  poem  or  a 
play. 

A  man  without  a  library,  who  is  learned,  studious^ 
and  persistent,  may  borrow  from  his  friends  and  patrons^ 
and  he  may  cull  from  all  the  literary  products  of  his  time 
or  former  times,  but  such  a  course  of  persevering  study 
could  not  escape  the  observation  and  mention  of  the 
man's  contemporaries  and,  as  in  the  case  of  Drayton  and 
Dekker,  the  fact  would  be  often  and  publicly  noted  and 
commented  upon. 

The  case  against  Shaksper  does  not  rest  upon  one  pre- 
sumption. It  is  a  case  of  admitted  fact  supported  by 
many  strong  presumptions. 

Donnelly  makes  a  very  strong  argument  against  Shaks- 
per, based  on  this  presumption.  He  asks  the  question, 
"Where  are  his  books?"  and  then  he  says  at  page  76 
of  his  Cryptogram  "The  author  of  the  plays  was  a  man 
of  large  learning;  he  had  read  and  studied  Homer,  Plato, 
Heliodorus,  Sophocles,  Euripides,  Dares  Phrygius,  Horace, 
Virgil,  Lucretius,  Statins,  Catullus,  Seneca,  Ovid,  Plautus, 
Plutarch,  Boccaccio,  Berni,  and  an  innumerable  array  of 
French  novelists  and  Spanish  and  Danish  writers.  The 
books  which  have  left  their  traces  in  the  plays  would  of 
themselves  have  constituted  a  large  library.  What  became 
of    them?     Did    William    Shaksper    of   Stratford    possess 


SHAKSPER  LEFT  NO  LETTERS  AND  HAD  NO  LIBRARY.     65 

such  a  library?  If  he  did,  there  is  not  the  sUghtest  refer- 
ence to  it  in  his  will." 

If  Shaksper  had  left  any  books,  the  Halls,  as  his  resid- 
uary legatees,  would  have  received  and  owned  them. 
But  none  were  ever  received,  owned,  claimed,  or  sold  by 
them. 

One  sarcastic  commentator  and  Baconian  advocate, 
alluding  to  Shaksper's  lack  of  a  library,  said  that  "the 
books  which  have  left  their  traces  m  the  plays  would  of 
themselves  have  constituted  a  large  library.  What  be- 
came of  them?  There  were  no  public  libraries  in  that 
day  to  which  the  student  could  resort.  The  man  who 
wrote  the  plays  must  have  loved  his  library ;  he  would 
have  remembered  it  in  his  last  hours.  He  could  not  have 
forgotten  Montaigne,  Holinshed,  Plutarch,  Ovid,  Plato, 
Horace,  the  French  and  Italian  romances,  to  remember 
his  'brod  silver  and  gilt  bole,'  his  'sword',  his  'wearing 
apparel'  and  'his  second-best  bed  with  the  furniture.' 
There  is  no  evidence  that  Shaksper  possessed  a  single 
book." 


CHAPTER  VII. 

SHAKSPER   GAVE   HIS   CHILDREN   NO   EDUCATION. 

''  Ignorance  is  the  curse  of  God, 
Knowledge  the  wing  wherewith  we  fly  to  heaven." 

—Second  Part  of  Henry  VI,  iv,  7. 

If  the  writer  of  the  seventh  scene  of  the  fourth  act  of 
second  Henry  the  Sixth  beUeved  that  ignorance  was  the 
curse  of  God,  and  if  he  had  children,  he  certainly  would 
either  by  himself  or  with  the  aid  of  a  teacher  have  taught 
them  to  read  and  write.  If  William  Shaksper  was  that 
writer,  then  he  permitted  his  own  children  to  be  afflicted 
with  that  curse  of  God,  for  his  two  daughters  were  igno- 
rant and  uneducated.  One  fact  is  worth  a  thousand  guesses, 
and  it  is  an  undeniable  fact  that  Shaksper's  children  were 
grossly  ignorant.  Judith  Shaksper,  his  daughter,  could 
not  even  write  her  name.  The  proof  as  to  her  ignorance 
is  clear  and  convincing  and  the  most  prejudiced  Shaksper 
admirer  can  not  truthfully  deny  this  statement.  Halli- 
well-Phillips  says:  "When  Judith  Shakespeare  was 
invited  in  December,  1611,  to  be  a  subscribing  witness 
to  two  instruments  respecting  a  house  at  the  southeast 
corner  of  Wood  Street,  then  being  sold  by  Mrs.  Quiney 
to  one  William  Mountford  for  the  large  sum  of  131  pounds, 
in  both  instances  her  attestations  were  executed  with 
marks."  Susanna,  the  elder  sister,  who  married  John 
Hall,  was  also  uneducated  and  her  own  conduct  with 
relation  to  her  deceased  husband's  effects  goes  to  show 
that  she  was  an  ignorant  woman.     Phillips  says  of  her, 


SHAKSPER    GAVE    HIS    CHILDREN    NO    EDUCATION.         67 

"During  the  civil  wars,  about  the  year  1642,  a  surgeon 
named  James  Cooke,  attending  in  his  professional  capa- 
city on  a  detachment  stationed  at  Stratford-bridge,  was 
invited  to  New  Place  to  examine  the  books  which  the 
doctor  had  left  behind  him,  'After  a  view  of  them,'  as 
he  observes,  'Mrs.  Hall  told  me  she  had  some  books  left 
by  one  that  professed  physic  with  her  husband  for  some 
money;  I  told  her  if  I  liked  them,  I  would  give  her  the 
money  again;  she  brought  them  forth,  amongst  which 
there  was  this,  with  another  of  the  authors,  both  intended 
for  the  press;  I,  being  acquainted  with  Mr.  Hall's  hand, 
told  her  that  one  or  two  of  them  were  her  husband's, 
and  showed  them  to  her;  she  denied;  I  affirmed,  till  I 
perceived  she  began  to  be  offended;  at  last  I  returned 
her  the  money.'  By  the  word  'this,'  Cooke  refers  to  the 
manuscript  Latin  medical  case-book  which  he  translated 
into  English,  and  published  in  1657.  The  conversation 
here  recorded  would  appear  to  show  that  Mrs.  Hall's 
education  had  not  been  of  an  enlarged  character;  that 
books  and  manuscripts,  even  when  they  were  the  pro- 
ductions of  her  own  husband,  were  not  of  much  interest 
to  her." 

If  Shaksper  had  heartlessly  deserted  his  wife  and 
children  and  had  left  them  for  years  in  penury  and  want 
to  take  care  of  themselves  as  best  they  could,  never  con- 
tributing to  their  support,  the  children  might  have  grown 
up  in  poverty  and  ignorance.  But  so  far  as  the  facts 
show,  there  was  at  least  no  abandonment  by  him  of  his 
daughters,  and  he  suffered  them  to  grow  up  to  woman- 
hood without  even  the  advantage  of  a  cheap  rudimental 
education.  He  was  with  them  presumably  from  day  to 
day,  from  month  to  month,  and  from  year  to  year,  and 


68  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

had  personal  knowledge  of  their  want  of  learning,  and  yet 
he  took  no  such  steps  as  a  father  should  take,  to  impart 
or  have  imparted  to  them  that  "knowledge  which  is  the 
wing  whereby  we  fly  to  heaven."  Blind  Milton's  daughter, 
it  is  said,  read  to  him  and  transcribed  his  poems  for  him. 
All  the  heroines  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  are  pictured  by 
the  real  writer  as  educated  and  accomplished  persons. 

Take  the  Portia  of  the  Merchant  of  Venice,  for  example. 
The  real  Shakespeare,  esteeming  her  learning  and  legal 
talent,  makes  her  a  presiding  judge  and  eloquent  arbiter 
in  the  case  of  life  and  death  affecting  Antonio,  and  she 
modestly  describes  herself  as 

"  An  unlessoned  girl,  unschooled,  unpractis'd, 
Happy  in  this,  she  is  not  yet  so  old 
But  she  may  learn ;  happier  than  this. 
She  is  not  bred  so  dull,  but  she  can  learn." 

And  the  lovely  but  ill-fated  Desdemona,  to  justify 
her  marrage  to  Othello,  respectfully  but  courageously 
declared  to  Brabantio: 

"  My  noble  father, 
I  do  perceive  here  a  divided  duty; 
To  you  I  am  bound  for  life  and  education ; 
My  life  and  education  both  do  learn  me 
How  to  respect  you." 

Here  the  real  Shakespeare  explicitly  recognizes  the 
duty  of  the  parent  to  educate  his  children.  No  one  but 
an  ignorant  and  churlish  parent  would  neglect  such  a 
duty.  No  decent  man  would  fail  in  his  educational 
duties.  But  the  daughters  of  William  Shaksper — the 
daughters  of  a  man  who  is  believed  by  the  multitude  to 


SHAKSPER   GAVE   HIS   CHILDREN   NO    EDUCATION.        69 

have  been  the  foremost  man  of  all  the  world  in  learning 
and  ability,  were  suffered  by  their  father  to  be  as  ignorant 
as  the  Southern  negro  was  in  the  days  of  slavery.  It  is 
a  fact  not  to  be  disputed  that  William  Shaksper  did  not 
obey  the  scriptural  injunction  to  train  up  his  children. 

The  reader  will  notice  that  I  am  asserting  as  an  undis- 
puted and  indisputable  fact,  that  the  two  daughters  of 
William  Shaksper  were  unable  to  write  their  own  names. 
No  one  can  contradict  the  statement  of  Morgan  in  his 
'•Myth,"  at  page  40,  that  ''although  William  Shaksper 
enjoyed  an  income  of  $25,000  (present  value  of  money) 
at  his  death,  he  never  had  his  own  children  taught  to 
read  and  write,  and  his  daughter  Judith  signed  her  mark 
to  her  marriage  bond."  This  startling  statement  is 
repeated  more  emphatically  and  boldly  at  page  172  of 
the  same  work: 

"It  is  not  William  Shaksper's  fault  that  he  sprang 
from  an  illiterate  family,  but  that  after  growing  so  rich 
as  to  be  able  to  enjoy  an  income  of  $25,000  a  year,  he 
should  never  send  his  children — especially  his  daughter 
Judith — ^to  school,  so  that  the  poor  girl  on  being  married, 
on  the  11th  day  of  February,  1616,  should  be  obliged  to 
sign  her  marriage  bond  with  a  mark,  shows,  we  think, 
that  he  was  not  that  immortal  he  would  have  been  had 
he  written  the  topmost  literature  of  the  world — the 
Shakespearean  Drama ! ' ' 

One  can  readily  understand  that  the  illiterate  son  of 
illiterate  parents,  continuing  illiterate  through  life,  might 
naturally  bring  up  his  own  children  in  ignorance,  but  the 
son  of  an  illiterate  father  who  had  made  for  himself  an 
education  and  who  had  discovered  what  blessings  an 
education  had  conferred  upon  him,  would  be  not  only 


70  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

willing  but  resolute  and  zealous  to  confer  the  blessings 
and  pleasures  attendant  upon  education  on  his  own 
children.  The  parent  emancipated  from  the  slavery  of 
ignorance  is  always  anxious  to  give  to  his  own  offspring 
the  light  of  knowledge. 

The  argument  for  Shaksper  runs  about  in  this  wise: 
William  Shaksper  was  born  of  poor  but  honest  parents. 
Being  themselves  illiterate,  they  saw  what  the  advan- 
tages of  education  were;  so  they  sent  their  boy  to  the 
Stratford  grammar  school,  where  in  a  few  months'  time, 
less  than  six,  he  learned  not  merely  to  read,  write,  and 
cipher,  but  he  also  acquired  a  knowledge  of  Latin,  Greek, 
Italian,  French,  German,  and  Spanish,  as  well  as  of  his 
own  mother  tongue.  He  learned  there  also,  or  picked 
up  at  odd  times,  all  that  is  worth  knowing  in  geology, 
medicine,  law,  theology,  botany,  chemistry,  geography, 
history,  ancient  and  modern,  mythology,  and  every 
science,  not  omitting  divine  philosophy.  He  also  there 
and  thus  imbibed  the  doctrine  of  the  cycles  and  discovered 
the  law  of  gravitation,  by  the  world  falsely  ascribed  to 
Newton,  and  the  law  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood  as 
wrongly  credited  to  Harvey. 

It  may  be  irreverent,  but  it  certainly  is  not  irrelevant 
to  remark  "What  a  great  school  that  Stratford  child's 
school  must  have  been,  and  what  a  blessing  it  would  be 
if  we  had  such  granunar  schools  now\  It  takes  a  long 
time,  a  very  long  time  in  our  public  schools,  liberally 
supported  as  they  are  by  general  taxation,  to  acquire  in 
this  twentieth  century  even  a  moderate  knowledge  of 
English.  They  must  have  had  a  double-distilled  high- 
pressure  system  in  that  Stratford  school."  It  appears, 
according  to  the  Shaksperite  theory,   that  there  was  a 


SHAKSPER    GAVE    HIS    CHILDREN    NO    EDUCATION.         71 

marked  difference  between  the  illiterate  father  and  the 
learned  son  as  to  their  educational  views.  According  to 
that  theory,  the  unlearned  father,  seeing  the  advantages 
of  knowledge,  gave  his  boy  a  grand  education  of  several 
long  months  at  a  child's  school;  while  the  learned  son, 
seeing  the  disadvantages  of  knowledge,  gave  his  own 
children  no  education  at  aU. 

It  is  clear  from  a  perusal  of  the  plays  that  the  author 
or  authors  of  them  was  or  were  conversant  with  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments.  Wadsworth  and  Bishop  Vincent 
clearly  show  this,  and  cite  the  biblical  words  and  expres- 
sions which  abound  in  and  permeate  the  plays.  The 
writer  or  writers  of  the  plays  must  have  been  familiar 
with  the  prayer  of  the  Psalmist  "  that  our  sons  may  be  as 
plants  grown  up  in  their  youth  and  that  our  daughters 
may  be  as  corner  stones,  polished  after  the  similitude  of 
a  palace."  He  must  have  read  the  first  and  second 
chapters  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs,  and  he  must  have  agreed 
with  Solomon  that  "  happy  is  the  man  that  findeth  wisdom, 
and  the  man  that  getteth  understanding,  for  the  mer- 
chandise of  it  is  better  than  silver,  and  the  gain  thereof 
than  fine  gold." 

Is  it  either  probable  or  possible  that  a  learned  and 
studious  man,  familiar  with  the  Bible,  such  as  the  writer 
of  the  plays  and  poems  must  have  been,  could  have  treated 
his  children  as  William  Shaksper  treated  his  by  suffering 
them  to  grow  up  in  ignorance  and  in  such  gross  ignorance 
that  they  could  not  even  write  their  own  names?  Credat 
JudcBUs  Apella,  non  ego. 

This  established  fact  of  Shaksper's  failure  to  give  his 
children  any  education  when  he  had  both  the  opportunity 
and  the  means  to  do  so,  is  another  link,  and  a  very  strong 


72  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

one,  in  the  chain  of  convincing  facts  which  unite  to  nega- 
tive the  claim  set  up,  not  by  him,  but  by  his  bhnded 
worshipers,  to  the  authorship  of  the  Shakespeare  plays. 

Right  here  I  desire  the  reader,  in  connection  with  the 
presumption  raised  by  his  failure  to  educate  his  own 
children,  to  notice  the  fact  that  no  claim  to  the  author- 
ship of  the  Shakespeare  plays  or  of  any  plays  was  ever 
made  by  William  Shaksper.  He  never  evinced  any  pride 
of  authorship  such  as  writers  naturally  have  in  their 
works;  he  never  sought  for  or  scolded  a  publisher  or  book- 
seller, as  Heywood,  Drayton,  and  other  contemporaries 
did;  he  never  dedicated  a  play  to  anybody;  he  never  sold 
or  transferred  a  manuscript  to  any  one;  he  never  indulged 
in  any  literary  controversies,  quarrels,  or  compliments 
with  any  writer  of  the  time;  he  never  did  or  said  any- 
thing to  show  that  he  was  an  author.  This  fact  in  his 
life-history  tends  to  aid  the  presumption  that  it  was  by 
reason  of  his  own  want  of  education  that  his  children 
were  suffered  to  grow  up  in  ignorance.  It  will  be  further 
shown  in  a  subsequent  chapter,  in  support  of  this  pre- 
sumption, that  he  permitted  the  works  of  others  to  be 
circulated  in  a  name  like  his  without  any  disclaimer. 
Only  a  very  ignorant  or  a  very  unscrupulous  man  would 
do  that. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


shaksper's  illiteracy  made  manifest  by  his 

chirography. 


"  You  must  not  now  deny  it  is  your  hand: 
Write  from  it,  if  you  can,  in  hand  or  phrase; 
Or  say  His  not  your  seal,  nor  your  invention.^' 

—Twelfth  Night,  v,  1. 

The  strongest  and  most  convincing  fact  in  Shaksper's 
true  Hfe-history  against  his  ability  to  write  either  a  play 
or  poem,  is  the  one  which  is  the  least  urged  and  employed 
for  the  instruction  of  the  people.  I  refer  to  the  irre- 
fragable proof  of  Shaksper's  inability  to  write  the  king's 
English  at  all,  or  at  least  with  such  facility  as  would 
enable  him  to  write  a  connected  and  grammatically 
arranged  sentence. 

William  H.  Smith  of  London,  England,  was  the  first 
writer  who  asserted  that  Shaksper  could  not  write;  but 
the  man  who  has  done  the  most  to  bring  this  powerful 
item  of  evidence  against  the  Shaksper  claim  before  the 
literary  world  is  William  H.  Burr,  heretofore  mentioned, 
a  noted  writer  and  expert  in  handwriting,  and  formerly 
an  official  stenographer  of  the  Senate  of  the  United  States. 
To  him,  more  than  to  any  other  person,  the  credit  should 
be  given  for  exposing  the  ignorance  of  Shaksper,  as  clearly 
and  conclusivel}^  manifested  by  his  handwriting.  This 
term,    handwriting,    or   the   manner   in   which   a   person 


74  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

writes,  includes  the  formation  of  the  characters,  the  separa- 
tion of  the  words,  and  other  features  distinguishing  the 
written  matter,  as  a  mechanical  result,  from  the  writing 
of  other  persons.  The  most  competent  experts,  recog- 
nized as  such  by  the  courts  of  law,  are  attorneys  at  law, 
bank  officers,  bookkeepers,  business  men,  county  officials, 
teachers  of  writing,  and  other  persons  who  in  their  busi- 
ness have  had  large  experience  in  the  examination  and 
study  of  handwriting. 

If  the  reader  of  this  chapter  had  never  heard  of  Shak- 
sper'snamein  connection  with  plays  or  poems  or  any  liter- 
ary work,  and  if  the  plays  were  either  credited  to  some 
other  person  or  to  no  one  in  particular,  and  if  the  signa- 
tures, facsimiles  of  which  I  am  about  to  exhibit,  were 
shown  to  the  reader  for  the  first  time,  with  a  request  for 
his  opinion  as  to  the  literacy  or  Dliteracy  of  the  maker 
of  the  signatures,  I  am  quite  sure  that  his  opinion,  after 
a  careful  and  disinterested  examination,  would  be  that 
William  Shaksper  of  Stratford-on-Avon  was  an  ignoramus. 

The  only  specimens  of  Shaksper' s  handwriting  extant, 
assuredly  authentic,  are  five  in  number. 

In  the  spring  of  1613,  when  Shaksper  was  nearly 
forty-nine  years  old,  he  purchased  from  one  Henry  Walker 
a  house  and  lot  near  the  Blackfriars  Theatre,  and  the 
deed  to  which  he  affixed  his  name  bears  the  date  of  March 
10,  1613.  On  the  following  day  he  mortgaged  the  premises 
to  Walker  to  secure  a  part  of  the  purchase  money  and 
signed  the  mortgage.  In  the  year  1768  the  mortgage 
deed,  which  was  dated  on  the  eleventh  of  March,  was 
found  among  the  title  deeds  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Fetherston- 
haugh  of  Oxted  in  the  County  of  Surrey,  and  was  pre- 
sented by  him  to  David  Garrick.     From  that  deed  Malone 


ILLITERACY   MADE    MANIFEST    BY    CHIROGRAPH Y.  75 

made  a  facsimile,  as  set  out  in  his  "Inquiry"  at  page  136. 
The  following  is  a  reproduction  of  that  signature: 


Afterward,  on  March  25,  1616,  a  month  before  his 
death,  his  name  was  placed  on  each  one  of  the  three 
sheets  of  paper  of  which  that  last  will  consists,  which  has 
been  rendered  famous,  or  as  some  would  say — infamous, 
by  the  bequest  to  his  wife  of  his  second-best  bed.  He 
did  not  write  his  own  will,  and  it  was  drawn  by  one  Francis 
Collins,  a  solicitor  living  at  Warwick. 

Here  is  a  facsimile  of  the  three  will  signatures: 

Throughout  the  body  of  the  will,  as  Sir  Frederic  Mad- 
den, who  examined  the  original  will,  states,  the  scrivener 
has  written  the  testator's  name  ''Shakspeare,"  whereas 
on  the  outside,  it  is  docketed  twice  by  the  Clerk  of  the 
Prerogative  Court  as  the  will  of  Mr.  Shackspere.     Here 


(^ 


70  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

was  a  learned  scrivener,  employed  specially  by  "the 
myriad-minded  man,"  sometimes  called  "our  immortal 
dramatic  poet,"  and  this  Warwick  solicitor,  who  ought 
to  have  known  his  fellow  countryman  personally  and  at 
least  by  reputation,  wrote  the  testator's  name  incorrectly, 
and  the  man  who  is  pictured  by  commentators  as  a  very 
industrious,  careful,  and  learned  man,  suffered  the  solicitor 
to  make  and  perpetuate  such  an  egregious  blunder  as  to 
his  surname.  Even  the  clerk  of  the  Prerogative  Court 
seems  to  have  been  ignorant  of  the  proper  name  of  the 
so-called  greatest  poet  of  the  world,  and  at  his  death 
dockets  his  will  as  that  of  "Mr.  Shackspere."  To  show 
in  this  connection  the  various  and  contradictory  opinions 
of  the  leading  commentators  as  to  how  the  Stratford 
man's  name  should  be  spelled,  I  quote  from  Madden 's 
observations,  premising  that  it  seems  to  have  never 
occurred  to  him  or  to  these  disputatious  wiseacres  whom 
he  names  that  the  man's  handwriting  was  worthy  of  a 
close  and  careful  examination  as  to  whether  he  knew 
enough  to  write  his  own  name  correctly  or  to  correct  an 
erroneous  spelling  of  his  name  by  others. 

Sir  Francis  says,  at  page  ten  of  his  communication, 
"I  must  beg  leave,  before  I  conclude,  to  make  a  few 
remarks  on  the  orthography  of  Shakspere's  name,  as 
written  by  himself. 

"There  are  five  acknowledged  genuine  signatures  of 
Shakspere  in  existence.  Of  these,  three  are  attached  to 
his  will  in  the  Prerogative  Court,  executed  25  March 
1615-16;  the  fourth  is  written  on  a  mortgage  deed,  dated 
11th  March  1612-13,  of  a  small  estate  purchased  by 
Shakspere  of  Henry  Walker  in  Blackfriars;  and  the  fifth, 
on  the  counterpart  of  the  deed  of  bargain  and  sale,  dated 
10th  March  1612-13. 


ILLITERACY    MADE    MANIFEST    BY    CHIROGRAPHY.         77 

"From  a  comparison  of  these  with  each  other,  and  with 
the  autograph  now  first  brought  forward,  it  is  most  cer- 
tain, in  my  opinion,  that  the  poet  always  wrote  his  name 
'  Shakspere,'  and  consequently  that  those  who  have 
inserted  an  e  after  the  h,  or  an  a  in  the  second  syllable, 
do  not  write  the  same  (as  far  as  we  are  able  to  judge)  in 
the  same  manner  as  the  poet  himself  uniformly  would 
authorize  us  to  do.  This  I  state  in  opposition  to  Chalmers 
and  Drake,  who  assert  that  'all  the  genuine  signatures 
of  Shakspeare  are  dissimilar.' 

''Let  me  consider  them  separately,  not  according  to  the 
priority  of  dates,  but  in  the  order  they  were  introduced 
to  the  notice  of  the  public.  In  the  year  1776,  George 
Steevens  traced  from  the  will  of  Shakspere  the  three 
signatures  attached  to  it  (one  to  each  sheet),  and  they 
were  engraved  for  the  first  time  in  the  second  edition  of 
Shakspere,  by  Johnson  and  Steevens,  in  1788.  They  have 
since  been  engraved  in  nearly  all  the  subsequent  editions; 
in  Malone's  Inquiry,  1796;  in  Chalmer's  Apology,  1797; 
in  Harding's  Essence  of  Malone,  1801;  in  Ireland's  Con- 
fessions, 1805;  in  Drake's  Shakspeare  and  his  Times,  1817; 
and  in  J.  G.  Nichols'  Autographs,  1829,  in  which  work 
they  are  for  the  second  time  traced  from  the  original 
document.  The  first  of  these  signatures,  subscribed  on 
the  first  sheet,  at  the  right-hand  corner  of  the  paper,  is 
decidedly  'William  Shakspere,'  and  no  one  has  ventured 
a  doubt  respecting  the  last  six  letters.  The  second  signa- 
ture is  also  clearly  'Will'm  Shakspere,'  although  from 
the  tail  of  the  letter  h  of  the  line  above  intervening  between 
the  e  and  r,  Chalmers  would  fain  raise  an  idle  quibble  as 
to  the  omission  of  a  letter.  The  third  signature  has  been 
the  subject  of  greater  controversy,  and  has  usually  been 
read,  'By  me,  William  Shakspeare.' 


78  THE    SHAKESPEAEE   TITLE. 

"The  next  document  is  the  mortgage  deed.  From  the 
label  of  this,  the  facsimile  in  Malone's  edition  of 
Shakspere,  1790,  was  executed,  bearing  this  appearance, 
'Wm  Shakspe.'" 

The  third  document  cited  by  Madden  is  the  counter- 
part of  the  deed  of  bargain  and  sale,  dated  the  day  before 
the  mortgage  deed.  ''Here  the  signature,"  he  says,  "is 
beyond  all  cavil  or  suspicion  'William  Shaksper.'" 

The  "sweet  swan  of  Avon"  seems,  from  the  way  he 
spelled  his  own  name,  to  have  been  the  antitype  of  that 
well-known  and  cheerful  witness  in  the  famous  case  of 
Bardell  versus  Pickwick  who  answered  to  the  name  of 
Samuel  Weller.  In  that  memorable  trial,  when  Mr. 
Weller  stepped  into  the  witness  box,  the  little  Judge 
inquired,  "  What's  your  name,  sir?"  "Sam  Weller,  my 
Lord,"  replied  that  gentleman.  "  Do  you  spell  it  with  a 
For  a  IF?"  inquired  the  Judge.  "That  depends  upon 
the  taste  and  fancy  of  the  speller,  my  Lord,"  replied 
Sam,  "I  never  had  occasion  to  spell  it  more  than  once 
or  twice  in  my  life,  but  I  spells  it  with  a  F."  Here  a 
voice  in  the  gallery  exclaimed  aloud,  "Quite  right,  too, 
Samuel,  quite  right.  Put  it  down  a  We,  my  Lord,  put 
it  down  a  We." 

Madden  puts  William's  name  down  as  Shakspere, 
Chalmers  puts  it  down  as  Shakspeare,  Malone  puts  it  down 
both  ways,  and  the  Wallis  document  puts  it  down  as 
Shaksper. 

Shaksper  appears  to  have  been  so  careless  or  ignorant 
as  to  the  way  he  should  spell  his  own  name  that  he,  like 
the  Sam  whom  Dickens  has  immortalized,  never  had 
occasion  to  spell  his  name  more  than  once  or  twice  in  his 
life,  and  then  in  such  a  reckless  way  as  to  the  vowels  as 


ILLITERACY   MADE    MANIFEST   BY    CHIROGRAPHY.         79 

to  let  the  spelling  depend  upon  the  taste  and  fancy  of 
the  speller. 

The  signatures  above  set  out  comprise  all  the  authentic 
writings  of  William  Shaksper,  which  relic  hunters,  anti- 
quarians, commentators,  historians,  and  pertinacious  and 
enthusiastic  searchers  have  been  able  to  unearth  after 
nearly  three  centuries  of  assiduous  inquiry  and  labor  not 
only  in  every  probable  receptacle  in  Great  Britain,  but  in 
every  part  of  the  world. 

Besides  the  five  signatures,  there  are  two  signatures 
which  may  be  his — one  of  them  on  a  copy  of  the  Montaigne 
of  Florio  and  the  other  on  a  volume  of  the  plays  in  the 
possession  of  Mr.  Gunther,  a  candy-maker  of  Chicago. 
But  the  two,  even  if  genuine,  are  no  improvement  on  the 
other  five.  By  examining  the  Montaigne  signature,  as 
found  in  Madden's  "Communication  to  the  Society  of 
Antiquaries,"  the  reader  can  judge  for  himself. 

A  few  years  ago,  a  volume  of  North's  Plutarch  of  1603 
was  sold  to  the  Boston  Public  Library,  which  has  the  words 
''Wilm  Shakspere"  written  in  it.  Commenting  upon  the 
question  of  the  determination  of  its  authenticity  by  com- 
parison, the  learned  librarian  very  truly  observes  that 
''the  field  of  comparison  of  the  library  signatures  with 
the  known  originals  is  narrow,  being  limited  to  those 
written  between  1613  and  1616,  all  of  which  show  such  a 
lack  of  facility  in  handwriting  as  would  almost  preclude 
the  possibility  of  Shaksper's  having  written  the  dramas 
attributed  to  him,  so  great  is  the  apparent  illiteracy  of 
his  signatures." 

If  the  reader  will  critically  and  dispassionately  examine 
the  facsimiles  given  in  Verplanck's  or  Drake's  or  Malone's 
editions  of  the  plays,  he  must  inevitably  conclude  that  a 


80  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

man,  who  while  in  apparent  good  health  wrote  so  slowly, 
so  laboriously,  so  wretchedly  and  so  incorrectly,  could  not 
before  that  time  have  written  the  magnificent  plays  which 
adorn  our  literature.  If  a  man  whose  Christian  name  was 
William  should  enter  the  office  of  an  attorney  or  scrivener 
to  sign  his  name  to  a  deed  or  mortgage  or  will  prepared 
for  him,  and  he  should  slowly  and  laboriously  scrawl  the 
letters  "  Willin"  for  William,  and  so  write  as  to  let  each  let- 
ter stand  by  itself,  the  draftsman  of  the  instrument  would 
know  at  once  that  the  signer  was  a  very  ignorant  man. 

I  often  wonder  why  English  experts  in  handwriting, 
who  have  access  to  the  originals  of  four  at  least  of  the 
undoubted  signatures  of  William  Shaksper,  made  by  him 
in  the  ripe  maturity  of  his  manhood,  do  not  critically 
analyze  these  signatures  for  the  benefit  of  the  people  who 
desire  to  know  whether  or  not  the  affix  "  William  Shake- 
speare "or  "William  Shake-speare  "  was  a  mask  for  the  real 
author  or  authors  of  the  plays  or  only  a  publisher's  trick. 

It  does  not,  however,  require  an  accomplished  expert 
in  chirography  to  determine  by  a  careful  examination  that 
William  Shaksper  could  not  have  written  the  plays  and 
poems.  Rapid  writers,  more  especially  editors  and  law- 
yers, may  write  illegible  scrawls,  but  they  either  run 
their  letters  together  or  make  them  quickly  when  they 
are  separated. 

Horace  Greeley  and  Rufus  Choate  wrote  very  fast  and 
so  illegibly  that  it  was  hard  to  decipher  the  words  written 
by  them.  They  were  learned  and  intellectual  giants,  but 
no  respectable  judge  of  handwriting  would  say  that  their 
handwriting  showed  that  they  were  ignorant  men.  He 
would  pronounce  them  rapid  and  careless  writers.  But 
where  a  man,  when  asked  to  write  his  name,  separates 


ILLITERACY   MADE   MANIFEST   BY   CHIROGRAPHY.        81 

each  letter  as  Shaksper  did,  and  so  constructs  them  as  to 
show  slowness  and  great  labor  in  forming  them,  besides 
misspelling  his  name  in  the  attempt,  he  forms  against 
himself  that  verdict  or  sentence  which  the  writer  of  act 
four,  scene  two,  of  Much  Ado  About  Nothing  put  into 
the  mouth  of  Dogberry  when  he  said,  "0,  that  he  were 
here  to  write  me  down  an  ass!" 

In  order  that  the  reader  may  judge  for  himself  as  to 
the  great  difference  between  the  handwriting  of  the  igno- 
rant Shaksper  and  that  of  the  two  illustrious  men  whom 
I  have  mentioned,  one  of  whom  was  the  great  editor  of 
the  "  New  York  Tribune  "  and  the  other  the  foremost  lawyer 
of  Massachusetts,  I  here  insert  the  facsimile  of  a  letter 
written  by  Horace  Greeley  and  also  of  one  written  by 
Rufus  Choate,  for  the  purpose  of  comparison.  I  have 
purposely  selected  the  handwriting  of  Horace  Greeley  and 
Rufus  Choate  for  illustration  because  they  were  rapid 
writers,  whose  words,  committed  to  paper,  it  was  and  is 
hard  for  the  reader  to  interpret.  In  "  Modern  Eloquence," 
Vol.  10,  at  page  210,  the  following  anecdote  is  related 
as  to  the  difficulty  of  deciphering  the  handwriting  of 
Greeley.  Greeley  once  wrote  a  note  to  a  brother  editor 
in  New  York  whose  writing  was,  if  possible,  equally  as 
illegible  as  his  own.  The  recipient  of  the  note,  not  being 
able  to  read  it,  sent  it  back  by  the  same  messenger  to  Mr. 
Greeley  for  elucidation.  Supposing  it  to  be  the  answer 
to  his  own  note,  Mr.  Greeley  looked  over  it,  but  was 
likewise  imable  to  read  it,  and  said  to  the  boy,  ''  Go — take 
it  back.  What  does  the  fool  mean?"  "Yes,  sir,"  said 
the  boy,  "that  is  just  what  he  says." 

The  first  is  a  facsimile  of  a  letter  from  Horace  Greeley, 
which  reads  as  follows: 


Sails  tCtiiunr, 

to  rtB  ASM,». 

5{m{,E33«kl5  3EriOuiJt, 

WLttkla  tHiibant, 

92  fKB   AN.%UU. 


icm^tforri, 


<- .../^.  Af( 


.^^^-^^-^^ 


/« 


'T 


'^'^-^^ 


<S:»r 


^:^:::^    .:>..--^   c^.-^-^  ,^:-^^  ^.T^^ 


ILLITERACY   MADE   MANIFEST   BY   CHIROGRAPHY.        83 

Reproduced  in  type,  it  reads  thus: 

86pb7annum.  OfFICE    OF    THE    TrIBUNE, 

Semi-wt'ekly  Tribune 
So  per  annum. 
Weekly  Tribune  ^EW  YORK,    JanV  20,  1863. 

Sir:  I  have  yours  of  the  15th.  I  know  well  that  an 
able  and  thoroughly  loyal  journal  at  Louisville  would  do 
good,  but  its  immediate  influence  would  be  slight,  and  the 
life  of  the  Republic  is  no  longer  a  question  of  years,  but 
of  months,  perhaps  of  weeks. 

There  is  beside,  one  sound  general  rule — a  newspaper 
that  can  not  support  itself  can  support  nothing  else.  If 
there  be  anti-slavery  people  in  Ky.  they  will  call  forth  or 
obtain  anti-slavery  journals;  if  not,  they  would  not  take 
them  though  printed  next  door.       Yours, 

E.  A.  Maginness,  Esq.  Horace  Greeley. 

An  analysis  of  the  Greeley  letter  will  show  the  reader 
that  the  famous  editor  was  a  very  rapid  writer  who  cared 
very  little  for  the  proper  and  regular  formation  of  the 
letters.  With  him,  the  chief  thought  in  writing  was  that 
his  hand  in  forming  the  letters  should  keep  pace  with  the 
emanations  from  his  mind.  The  shorter  he  could  make  a 
letter  of  the  alphabet  without  destroying  it  altogether,  the 
better  it  was  for  his  editorial  and  epistolary  purposes. 
He  did  not  labor  or  worry  over  the  formation  of  any  word. 
The  only  respite  he  gave  to  the  steady  impulse  of  the  pen 
was  in  the  matter  of  italization  when  he  desired  to  call 
the  reader's  attention  to  some  particular  fact  or  principle. 
When  he  wrote  the  letter  above  set  out  in  the  dark  days 
of  the  war  for  the  union,  he  italicized  the  word  "imme- 
diate" to  impress  the  reader  with  the  fact  that  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  newspaper  was  of  no  importance  when  the 


84 


THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 


life  of  the  republic  was  not  a  question  of  years,  but  of 
weeks.  When  he  enunciated  the  principle  that  a  news- 
paper that  can  not  support  itself  can  support  nothing  else, 
he  paused  in  his  rapid  dashing  down  of  words  to  italicize 
the  declaration  so  that  it  should  fasten  itself  on  the  atten- 
tion of  the  recipient  of  the  letter.  Outside  of  the  italiza- 
tion  of  an  important  fact,  or  of  what  he  believed  to  be  a 
cardinal  principle,  he  never  paused  in  his  rapid  flight  with 
the  pen.  When  he  wrote  his  name,  he  formed  the  letters 
so  rapidly  that  all  the  letters,  both  of  the  Christian  name 
and  surname,  were  run  together  with  no  separating  space. 
His  epistle  to  Maginness  indicates  that  he  was  so  rapid  a 
writer  that  he  cared  a  little,  but  a  very  little,  for  the  for- 
mation of  the  characters  or  the  separation  of  the  words. 
I  now  append  a  facsimile  of  a  letter  of  Rufus  Choate, 
as  follows : 


ILLITERACY   MADE    MANIFEST    BY    CHIROGRAPH  Y.         85 

Reproduced  in  type,  Choate's  letter  reads  thus: 

To  Maj.  Will  Stevens. 

Dear  Sir:  I  find  it  impossible  to  accommodate  my 
three  students  and  myself  in  one  office;  therefore  am 
under  the  necessity  of  leaving  that  which  I  now  occupy. 
Will  you  be  good  enough  to  apprise  your  mother  that  I 
shall  cease  to  occupy  this  office  after  the  last  day  of  the 
present  month;  till  then  of  course  I  shall  pay  rent. 

Your  obt.  serv't, 

R.  Choate. 
Dec.  18,  1830. 

The  first  impression  produced  by  an  inspection  of  the 
crow-tracks  of  Rufus  Choate,  the  renowned  lawyer  and 
statesman,  is  that  he  cared  nothing  about  the  reader's 
ability  to  decipher  the  words,  whether  proper  or  common. 
Thus  he  galloped  over  the  proper  name  ''Stevens"  in  the 
first  line.  Caring  nothing  for  the  formation  of  the  letters, 
he  shortened  his  letters  as  well  as  his  words  whenever  he 
could,  as  for  instance  when  he  formed  the  letter  d  in 
"find",  y  in  ''necessity,"  and  the  figure  8  m  "1830"  and 
"18."  He  took  no  pains  to  keep  his  letters  together,  so 
that  while  he  wrote  very  fast  he  did  not  write  as  fast  as 
Greeley  did,  and  much  more  illegibly. 

Contrariwise,  William  Shaksper's  handwriting  shows 
that  he  labored  over  the  formation  of  each  letter,  not  for 
the  purpose  of  making  it  fair,  round,  and  regular,  but  in 
order  to  make  it  so  that  it  would  pass  muster  as  a  letter. 
This  slowness  indicates  clearly  that  he  did  not  wield  the 
pen  of  a  ready  writer;  but  rather  that  when  he  was  com- 
pelled to  put  down  his  name  to  a  legal  document,  like  a 
deed,  mortgage,  or  wUl,  it  was  a  hard,  very  hard  matter 


86  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

for  him  to  form  the  letters  to  make  up  his  name.  It  is 
enough  to  disquahfy  Shaksper  as  a  writer  or  author  to 
rest  the  argument  from  the  acknowledged  signatures  of 
the  man  on  the  apparent  slowness  and  want  of  facility 
in  writing  displayed  thereby,  without  suggesting  that  no 
two  of  the  five  signatures  are  at  all  alike,  except  the  two 
which  have  the  appearance  of  being  traced.  Whether 
traced  or  not,  all  the  signatures  are  conspicuous  for  their 
wretchedness  of  execution.  The  fact  that  the  name  is 
not  uniformly  spelled  also  strongly  supports  the  theory, 
not  only  of  illiteracy  but  of  hand  guiding  as  to  two  of  the 
signatures.  Any  intelligent  person  can  readily  detect  the 
difference  between  the  handwriting  of  a  rapid,  busy,  care- 
less writer  who  cares  more  for  the  matter  than  the  manner, 
and  the  slow,  hesitating,  deformed,  and  separated  strokes 
of  an  illiterate  person. 

An  intelligent  and  scholarly  but  interested  critic  has 
maintained  that  the  handwriting  of  such  an  eminent 
statesman  as  the  late  Senator  Joseph  E.  McDonald  of 
Indiana,  was  as  bad  as  that  of  Shaksper.  I,  therefore, 
annex  a  facsimile  and  reproduction  of  one  of  McDonald's 
letters,  to  show  how  absurd  the  critic's  statements  are. 

The  reader  will  notice  that  Mr.  McDonald  did  as  law- 
yers and  well-trained  business  men  do  when  they  write 
letters.  They  generally  subordinate  elegance  and  neat- 
ness in  handwriting  to  speed.  There  is  no  careful  fol- 
lowing of  copy,  as  in  the  case  of  a  model  phrase  set 
by  a  teacher  of  writing  for  his  pupils  to  imitate,  but 
rather  a  mingling  of  haste  with  just  enough  care  exer- 
cised in  the  formation  of  the  letters  to  enable  the  client 
or  the  business  correspondent  to  decipher  the  words  of 
the  letter. 


ILLITERACY   MADE    MANIFEST   BY    CHIROGRAPH Y.  87 


-ytt/ia-yi^i^o^,  -^V  r/^r^-^""  -^  ^ liSa. 


/^^  k/^/tC  ^^//i 

^2W^      t/-****-    /^^      ^^f*^-!.'^  £Z^^f^^*>C  ^U^*.^^^  ^Zr    (/^'^  ■     .  .. .  » 


<^ 


88  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Indianapolis,  August  28,  1882. 
Hon.  John  Stotzenburg. 

Dear  Sir:  Your  favor  enclosing  proof  slips  of  your 
dialogue  on  prohibition  has  been  rec'd.  I  am  very  much 
pleased  with  the  manner  you  treat  the  subject  and  think 
it  will  do  great  good  especially  if  it  could  have  a  good 
circulation  among  the  farmers.  I  have  given  the  slip  to 
Mr.  Shoemaker  and  he  promises  to  make  copious  extracts 
from  it,  but  thought  it  too  long  for  a  daily.  What  would 
the  Ledger  print  it  in  supplement  for?  We  are  poor 
indeed,  but  want  to  make  the  best  of  what  we  have.  I 
spoke  to  Shoemaker  in  regard  to  Cottom,  but  find  him 
disinclined  to  incur  the  expense.  Every  evidence  is 
favorable  to  our  success,  but  we  must  work  for  it. 

Yrs  in  haste, 

J.  E.  McDonald. 

No  question  can  be  raised  as  to  lack  of  facility  in 
writing  by  an  inspection  of  the  McDonald  letter.  It  is 
evident  that  the  Senator  wrote  fast  and  much  more 
plainly  and  with  more  regard  to  the  formation  of  the 
characters  than  either  Greeley  or  Choate.  An  inspection 
of  such  letters  as  the  three  hereinbefore  set  out  shows 
that  the  question  raised  is  not  the  issue  of  legibility  or 
illegibility,  but  of  the  ability  to  write  at  all  or  with  the 
facility  required  of  a  writer  of  books.  The  question 
raised  upon  the  trial  of  the  McDonald  will  case,  so  far  as 
the  handwriting  of  Senator  McDonald  was  concerned,  was 
not  as  to  whether  he  wrote  well  or  ill  or  legibly  or  illegibly, 
but  as  to  whether  it  was  a  peculiarity  of  the  testator's 
signatures  that  the  word  "McDonald"  was  not  connected  all 
the  way  through.  But  to  recur  to  the  Shaksper  sig- 
natures. 


ILLITERACY    MADE    MANIFEST   BY    CHIROGRAPHY.         89 

Reader,  examine,  if  you  please,  the  S  in  the  Shaksper 
signature,  and,  if  you  choose,  try  with  a  pen  or  pencil  to 
make  such  an  S.  I  invite  you  now  to  look  how  correctly 
and  elegantly  this  great  scholar  and  master  workman  of 
the  Muses  spells  ''William."  Put  yourself,  if  you  please, 
in  his  place  and  remember  the  solemn  occasion.  It  is  a 
very  serious  business  transaction,  you  will  bear  in  mind, 
no  less  than  the  execution  of  a  last  will;  and  you  know 
that  at  such  a  time  a  man  or  woman  is  always  anxious  to 
do  the  proper  and  correct  thing  and  make  the  signature 
as  good  as  possible.  If  such  a  distinguished  scholar,  for 
instance,  as  Gladstone  was,  should,  at  the  age  of  forty, 
in  the  very  prime  of  life,  have  been  required  to  sign  his 
full  name  to  a  last  will,  we  should  expect  him  to  know 
how  to  spell  his  Christian  name  correctly  and  to  do  it 
pretty  quickly.  But  a  great  genius  like  Shaksper,  who 
sprang  like  Minerva  full-armed  from  his  birth  into  the 
field  of  literature,  contrived  with  much  ado  to  write  his 
Christian  name  "Willin."  And  just  see  how  carefully  he 
wrote  that  Willin.  Look  at  the  capital  W  and  the  dis- 
tance between  it  and  the  i;  then  notice  the  distance 
between  the  I,  the  i  and  the  n.  These  specimens  may  be 
called  absurdl)^  varied.  Burr,  commenting  on  the  signa- 
tures, says,  ''The  spelling  of  the  five  autographs  of  the 
'Bard  of  Avon'  is  S-h-a-k-s-p-e-r,  without  a  final  e. 
This  is  plain  enough  in  the  earliest  signature,  subscribed 
to  the  deed  of  March  10,  1613. 

"The  signature  to  the  mortgage,  dated  March  11, 
1613,  reads  'Wilham  Shakspe.'  There  was  no  space  left 
for  another  letter  on  the  sealed  tag,  so  he  wrote  above  the 
e  what  looks  like  an  a,  but  was  probably  an  attempt 
at  an  r. 


90  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

''The  next  autograph  was  written  three  years  later^ 
being  the  first  of  the  three  signatures  to  as  many  sheets 
of  his  will.  It  has  a  final  letter,  which  has  been  mistaken 
for  an  e,  but  is  a  German  script  r,  much  like  our  script  w 
tilted  up  at  the  left.  Woodbury's  'Method  of  Learning 
the  German  Language,'  Lesson  III,  has  it. 

"In  the  remaining  autographs  the  terminal  letters 
after  p  are  illegible." 

In  the  address  to  the  reader  in  the  Folio  of  1623,  it  was 
asserted  by  Heminge  and  Condell  as  to  Shaksper  that 
"we  have  scarce  received  from  him  a  blot  in  his  papers." 
Of  course,  every  person  of  common  sense  knows  that  it 
is  utterly  impossible  for  a  ready  writer  to  work  in  the 
composition  of  a  book  with  pen  and  ink  without  many 
blots  and  erasures,  and  as  to  any  author  such  a  state- 
ment would  be  false.  Corrections  and  emendations  are 
necessary  and  inevitable.  But  the  statement  of  Heminge 
and  Condell  may  be  very  true  as  to  Shaksper,  for  to  judge 
from  his  handwriting  he  could  not  indite  a  single  line  to 
be  blotted.  It  could  not  have  been  true  of  a  ready  writer, 
who  was  daily  and  very  often  hastily  preparing,  revising, 
and  composing  plays  for  theatrical  use.  It  might  possibly 
be  true  of  a  very  slow  and  painstaking  writer  like  John 
Webster,  who  in  his  White  Devil,  in  the  address  to  the 
reader,  says: 

"To  those  who  report  I  was  a  long  time  in  finishing 
this  tragedy,  I  confess  I  do  not  write  with  a  goose  quill 
winged  with  two  feathers,  and  if  they  will  needs  make  it 
my  fault,  I  must  answer  them  with  that  of  Euripides  to 
Alcestides,  a  tragedy  writer.  Alcestides  objecting  that 
Euripides  had  only,  in  three  days,  composed  three  verses, 
whereas  himself  had  written  three  hundred,  '  Thou  tellest 


ILLITERACY   MADE   MANIFEST   BY   CHIROGRAPH Y.         91 

truth/  quoth  he,  '  but  here's  the  difference — thine  shall 
only  be  read  for  three  days,  whereas  mine  shall  continue 
three  ages.'" 

The  same  story  as  to  entire  freedom  from  paper-blotting 
is  applied  by  the  stationer  Humphrey  Moseley  to  John 
Fletcher.  He  says  in  the  introduction  to  the  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher  folio  of  1647,  "  Whatever  I  have  seen  of  Mr. 
Fletcher's  own  hand  is  free  from  interlining,  and  his 
friends  affirm  that  he  never  writ  any  one  thing  twice." 
The  editor  of  the  1811  edition  of  the  works  of  the  two 
poets  says,  in  a  note  appended  to  this  remark  of  Moseley's, 
"May  we  not  suppose  this  to  have  been  a  sort  of  com- 
monplace compliment?  but  surely  it  is  a  very  injudicious 
one.  A  similar  assertion  applied  to  Shakespeare  has 
afforded  much  conversation  in  the  literary  world." 

As  I  have  heretofore  stated,  it  is  no  argument  against 
Shaksper's  ability  to  write  plays  that  he  was  poor,  or  that 
his  parents  were  poor,  or  that  he  had  been  a  poacher  or 
butcher  in  early  life,  or  that  he  married  a  woman  eight 
years  older  than  himself,  to  whom  he  was  unkind,  or  that 
he  was  bibulous  or  licentious.  But  if  William  Shaksper 
at  the  age  of  forty-nine,  and  after  the  poems  and  plays 
had  been  written,  could  scarcely  write  his  own  name  and 
could  only  write  it  slowly,  incorrectly,  and  laboriously  in 
the  manner  that  illiterate  and  uneducated  men  write 
their  names,  that  fact  is  an  unanswerable  and  irrefragable 
proof  of  his  inability  to  write  even  one  line  of  poetry,  good 
or  bad.  He  was  absolutely  unable  to  write  at  all,  if  the 
attempts  at  signatures  are  his  own  genuine  acts.  It  can 
not  be  shown  that  Shaksper  was  drunk  when  he  signed 
the  deed  and  mortgage.  Neither  can  it  be  said  that  he 
was  in  articulo  mortis  when  he  so  slowly  and  painfully 


92  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

scrawled  the  signatures  to  the  will,  for  it  was  signed  on 
March  25th,  and  he  did  not  die  for  a  month  afterward. 
Edwards,  in  his  "Shaksper  not  Shakespeare,"  page  401, 
commenting  on  the  five  acknowledged  signatures  after  a 
very  careful  examination  of  them,  says,  "Of  the  five 
signatures,  no  one  is  Shakespeare;  the  two  on  the  deeds 
are  Shakspar  and  Shaksper;  the  first  on  the  will  is  Shaksper, 
the  second,  Shaksper,  and,  dismissing  Malone's  super- 
fluous stroke,  the  third  is  Shaksper.  Nowhere  is  there 
any  Shakespeare,  the  name  under  which  the  plays  were 
published. 

"Supposing  for  a  moment  that  one  hand  could  have 
written  the  five  signatures,  what  does  it  prove?  In  the 
first — on  the  mortgage — he  wTites  Wm  for  William;  in 
the  next,  made  at  the  same  time,  he  writes  William  at 
length,  but  on  top  of  the  surname.  Again,  in  the  first  of 
the  will  signatures,  he  wTites  William  above  the  surname. 
The  next  time  he  attempts  to  get  the  names  in  line,  but 
misses  it  considerably,  the  given  name — now  spelled 
Willin — being  raised  to  the  level  of  the  top  of  the  sur- 
name, and  moreover  it  is  separated  from  the  latter  by  a 
tolerably  wide  space.  The  third  time  he  writes  William, 
he  gets  it  at  the  proper  distance  from  the  surname,  but 
the  latter  has  tumbled,  and  is  almost  wholly  below  the 
level  of  the  given  name. 

"These  little  things  show  that  the  writer  was  not  in  the 
habit  of  signing  his  own  name,  or  accustomed  to  the  use 
of  a  pen.  Is  it  to  be  believed  that  a  man  who,  for  fully 
twenty  years,  had  been  in  active  business,  if  he  could 
write,  never  attained  a  fixed  and  recognizable  signature; 
that  he  never  wrote  his  name  in  a  straight  line;  that  in 
the  same  hour,  and  on  the  same  document,  he  would  sign 


ILLITERACY   MADE   MANIFEST   BY   CHIROGRAPHY.         93 

his  name  William  and  Willin,  and  his  surname  in  as  many- 
different  styles  of  letters  as  he  made  signatures? 

"Skottowe  said  in  1826,  'In  regard  to  the  signatures  to 
the  will,  a  sort  of  doubt  has  been  cast  on  the  first  and 
second  by  the  suggestion  that  they  might  have  been  in 
the  handwriting  of  the  notary  employed  on  the  occasion.' 

"  Drake  says,  'The  autographs  present  us  with  five 
signatures  which,  singular  as  it  may  appear,  all  vary 
either  in  the  mode  of  writing  or  mode  of  spelling.  The 
first  appears  Wm  Shakspea,  the  second  William  Shaksper. 
The  three  will  signatures,  it  is  remarkable,  differ  consider- 
ably, especially  in  the  surnames,  for  in  the  first  we  have 
Shackspere;  in  the  second,  Shakspere;  in  the  third, 
Shakespeare. 

"  'My  own  opinion  is  that  William  Shakspere  never 
learned  to  write  and  that  he  at  no  time  signed  his  name. 
Had  William  as  a  boy  learned  to  write,  as  a  man  he  would 
have  employed  but  one  alphabet,  and  not  as  many  alpha- 
bets as  he  made  signatures.  Any  business  man  will  wit- 
ness that  a  correspondent  of  his  who  sends  a  different 
signature  with  every  communication  is  not  doing  his  own 
writing,  but  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry  are  doing  it  for  him. 
So  it  was  with  this  Shaksper.'" 

I  might  stop  here  and  submit  the  whole  question  of 
Shaksper's  inability  to  write  plays  to  the  judgment  of 
impartial  critics,  but  there  are  other  facts  to  be  presented 
and  several  misrepresentations  to  be  exposed  and  cor- 
rected, to  which  I  desire  to  call  the  attention  of  the  stu- 
dious reader. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

shaksper's  utter  indifference  to  literary 
proprieties. 

"  Learning  is  but  an  adjunct  to  our  self, 
And  where  we  are  our  learning  likewise  is." 

—Love's  Labor's  Lost,  iv,  3. 

Men  generally  take  a  very  great  pride  in  the  poetical 
or  prose  offspring  of  their  brains  and  especially  if  the  play, 
the  poem,  or  the  prose  story  or  history  created  or  unfolded 
pleases  the  public.  Moreover,  all  honorable  and  decent 
men  of  intelligence,  when  a  name  like  or  somewhat  like 
their  own  is  unlawfully  or  wrongly  used  by  the  publisher 
of  a  book,  refuse  to  claim  or  receive  credit  for  the  published 
thoughts  of  other  men. 

The  first  proposition  should  be  modified  to  this  extent, 
that  if  a  poor  and  needy  author  should  sell  the  product 
of  his  brain  outright  to  another,  thereby  surrendering 
all  his  rights  therein,  he  might  wholly  forget  or  at  least 
no  longer  care  for  the  welfare  of  his  abandoned  offspring. 
If,  therefore,  the  fact  could  be  shown  that  Shaksper  ever 
wrote  a  play  or  plays  and  sold  it  or  them  or  any  of  them, 
as  Michael  Drayton,  Henry  Chettle,  Thomas  Dekker,  and 
other  writers  of  plays  did  for  paltry  sums  to  Henslowe  or 
any  other  proprietor  of  a  theatre,  the  man's  indifference 
to  the  plays  which  went  about  in  a  name  similar  to  his 
would  be  perhaps  explainable.  But  it  nowhere  appears 
that  Shaksper  ever  gave,  sold,  assigned,  or  transferred  a 
play  or  poem  or  prose  writing  to  anybody.  That  he  was 
utterly  indifferent  to  the  plays  which  are  now  attributed 
to  him  is  conceded  by  all  the  commentators.     He  never 


INDIFFERENCE   TO    LITERARY    PROPRIETIES.  95 

mentioned  them  to  friend  or  foe.  He  never  claimed  or 
pretended  that  he  ever  wrote  or  revised  a  play  and  he 
made  no  mention  of  any  literary  friends  to  anybody  or  in 
anyway.  Phillips,  in  his  "Outlines,"  Vol.  2,  page  262, 
referring  to  his  will,  says:  "Not  only  is  there  no  mention 
of  Drayton,  Ben  Jonson,  or  any  of  his  other  literary 
friends,  but  an  entire  absence  of  reference  to  his  own 
compositions.  When  these  facts  are  considered  adjunc- 
tively  with  his  want  of  vigilance  in  not  having  previously 
secured  authorized  publications  of  any  one  of  his  dramas 
and  with  other  episodes  of  his  life,  it  is  difficult  to  resist 
the  conviction  that  he  was  indifferent  to  the  posthumous 
fate  of  his  own  writings."  I  would  put  the  matter  a  little 
more  strongly  than  Phillips  puts  it,  and  far  beyond  the 
conviction  of  mere  indifference:  I  would  say  that  when 
the  other  episodes  of  Shaksper's  life  founded  on  fact  are 
considered,  as  for  instance  his  uttter  inability  to  write  his 
own  name  with  that  facility  which  is  absolutely  required 
of  a  scholarly  writer,  such  as  the  author  or  authors  of  the 
plays  and  poems  must  have  been;  and  considering  also 
the  episode  of  suffering  his  children  to  grow  up  in  igno- 
rance, it  is  difficult  to  resist  the  conviction  that  some  one 
else  wrote  the  plays  and  poems  with  which  he  is  credited. 
As  to  the  second  proposition,  if  Shaksper  was  a  man  of 
intelligence,  he  was  then  a  dishonorable  and  a  very  mean 
man,  for  his  own  deluded  worshipers  concede  that  he 
permitted  books  written  by  other  men  to  be  published 
under  his  name  or  a  name  similar  to  his — books  of  which 
he  never  wrote  or  composed  a  single  line.  The  reader 
will  notice  the  qualification  of  this  proposition,  by  the 
use  of  the  phrase  "if  Shaksper  was  a  man  of  intelligence." 
If  he  was  not,  and  if  he  was  the  ignoramus  which  his 


96  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

handwriting  plainly  proves  him  to  have  been,  he  might 
have  been  utterly  oblivious  to  the  uses  to  which  his  name 
was  put.  Phillips  has  to  admit  the  correctness  of  the 
second  proposition,  based  on  the  hypothesis  that  Shaksper 
was  a  man  of  any  intelligence,  for  he  says  that  "it  is 
extremely  improbable  that  Shaksper  in  that  age  of  small 
London  and  few  publishers  could  have  been  ignorant  of 
the  use  made  of  his  name  in  the  first  edition  of  the  Pas- 
sionate Pilgrim."  By  the  Passionate  Pilgrim,  Phillips 
means  that  in  the  year  1599,  when  Shaksper  was  thirty- 
five  years  old,  W.  Jaggard  published  a  book  of  poems  by 
the  following  title 

THE   PASSIONATE   PILGRIM 

BY  W.    SHAKESPEARE 

a  book  containing  poetry  actually  written  by  Richard 
Barnfield.  Shaksper  permitted  this  fraud  to  be  practiced 
without  objection  or  remonstrance;  and  in  1612,  when 
Shaksper  was  forty-eight  years  old,  Jaggard  issued  another 
edition  of  the  same  book,  purporting  to  be  by  W.  Shake- 
speare, in  which  he  added  a  translation  of  two  of  Ovid's 
epistles  which  had  been  made  by  the  poet  Thomas  Hey- 
wood  and  previously  printed  by  him  in  1609  with  his 
name  in  the  Troja  Britannica.  While  Shaksper  never 
troubled  himself  about  the  fraudulent  use  of  the  name  of 
William  Shakespeare  as  the  author,  Heywood,  in  1612, 
exposed  the  wrong  that  had  been  done  to  him  and  com- 
pelled Jaggard  to  take  the  name  "Shakespeare"  from 
the  title  page. 

A  far  more  remarkable  operation  of  the  same  kind, 
as  Phillips  puts  it,  was  perpetrated  in  the  year  1600  when 
Thomas  Pavier,  another  bookseller,  brought  out  the  play 


INDIFFERENCE   TO   LITERARY   PROPRIETIES.  97 

of  the  first  part  of  Sir  John  Oldcastle  with  the  name  of 
William  Shakespeare  as  the  author  on  the  title  page.  If 
William  Shaksper  was  a  resident  of  London  at  that  time, 
and  if  he  was  at  all  familiar  with  actors,  theatrical  man- 
agers, and  playwrights,  he  must  have  known  that  Michael 
Drayton,  An.thony  Monday,  Robert  Wilson,  and  Richard 
Hathaway  were  the  makers  of  that  play,  and  whether  he 
did  or  did  not  so  know,  he  knew,  at  any  rate,  that  he, 
Shaksper,  did  not  write  a  single  line  of  it.  And  yet 
to-day  if  Henslowe's  Diary  had  not  been  discovered,  the 
Shaksper  worshipers  would  have  found  the  same  Shake- 
spearean beauties  in  Sir  John  Oldcastle  that  they  do  in 
the  other  plays  found  in  the  Folio  of  1623,  and  they  would 
have  written  books  to  show  that  he  wrote  it  in  his  comic 
period,  since  they  picture  him  as  having  separate  mental 
grades  at  different  periods  of  his  life.  They  would  have  fal- 
len into  line  under  von  Schlegel  and  followed  his  leadership. 

It  is  amusing  in  connection  with  the  history  of  this 
publication  to  read  the  comments  of  Collier  upon  it  in 
Chapter  13  of  his  ''Life  of  William  Shaksper." 

"We  ought  not  to  pass  over  without  notice,"  he  says, 
"  a  circumstance  which  happened  in  1600,  and  is  connected 
with  the  question  of  the  authorized  or  unauthorized  pub- 
lication of  the  Shakespeare  plays.  In  that  year,  a  quarto 
impression  of  a  play  called  'The  First  part  of  the  true 
and  honorable  history  of  the  Life  of  Sir  John  Oldcastle, 
the  Good  Lord  Cobham,'  came  out,  on  the  title  page  of 
which  the  name  of  William  Shakespeare  appeared  at 
length.  We  find  by  Henslowe's  Diary  that  this  drama 
was  in  fact  the  authorship  of  four  poets,  Anthony  Mon- 
day, Michael  Drayton,  Robert  Wilson,  and  Richard  Hath- 
away, and  to  attribute  it  to  Shakespeare  was  evidently  a 


98  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

mere  trick  by  the  bookseller,  Thomas  Pavier,  in  the  hope 
that  it  would  be  bought  as  his  work.  Malone  remarked 
upon  this  fraud,  but  he  was  not  aware,  when  he  wrote, 
that  it  had  been  detected  and  corrected  at  the  time,  for 
since  his  day  more  than  one  copy  of  'the  first  part,  etc., 
of  Sir  John  Oldcastle'  has  come  to  light,  upon  the  title 
page  of  which  no  name  is  to  be  found,  the  bookseller 
apparently  having  been  compelled  to  cancel  the  leaf  con- 
taining it.  From  the  indifference  Shakespeare  seems  to 
have  displayed  on  matters  of  this  kind,  we  may  possibly 
conclude  that  the  cancel  was  made  at  the  instance  of  one 
of  the  four  poets  who  were  the  real  authors  of  the  play; 
we  have  no  means  of  speaking  decisively  upon  the  point, 
and  the  step  may  have  been  in  some  way  connected  with 
the  objection  taken  by  living  members  of  the  Oldcastle 
family  to  the  name  which  had  been  assigned  by  Shake- 
speare in  the  first  instance  to  FalstafT." 

A  more  reasonable  conjecture  than  Collier's  first  one 
would  be  that  one  or  all  of  the  four  players  who  com- 
posed this  play  authorized  it  to  be  published  in  the  name 
of  Shakespeare  and  afterward  had  it  canceled  for  the 
reason  conjectured  by  Collier  in  connection  with  the 
Oldcastle  family's  objection  to  the  use  of  the  name  "Old- 
castle"; or  a  still  more  plausible  conjecture  would  be  that 
the  man  who  bought  the  reversion  of  old  plays,  and  who 
was  abused  by  Jonson  as  the  poet  ape,  might  have  pur- 
chased it  from  Henslowe  and  had  it  published  in  the 
name  of  William  Shakespeare  or  Shake-speare.  It  appears 
that  Thomas  Dekker  made  additions  to  the  play  of  Sir 
John  Oldcastle.  This  is  shown  on  pages  236  and  239  of 
Henslowe's  Diary  from  entries  of  payments  to  him  by 
Henslowe  therefor. 


INDIFFERENCE    TO    LITERARY    PROPRIETIES.  99 

Now  while  Shaksper,  with  all  this  knowledge,  if  an 
intelligent  man,  suffered  Pavier  to  put  the  name  of  Wil- 
liam Shakespeare  as  the  author  of  this  play  on  the  title 
page,  the  real  facts  are,  as  indicated  in  the  receipt  given 
in  the  year  1599,  here  copied  from  Henslowe's  Diary,  that 
Shaksper  had  nothing  to  do  with  either  part  of  this  play. 

"This  16th  day  of  October  99  receved  by  me,  Thomas 
Dounton,  of  Phillipp  Henchlowe,  to  pay  Mr.  Monday, 
Mr.  Drayton  and  Mr.  Wilson  and  Hathaway  for  the  first 
part  of  the  Lyfe  of  Sir  John  Ouldcasstell,  and  in  earnest 
of  the  second  parte,  for  the  use  of  the  compayny  ten 
pounds." 

This  comedy  was  produced  at  the  Rose  Theatre  in 
November,  1599,  and  it  took  so  well  that  Henslowe  gave 
Drayton  and  the  other  poets  a  gratuity  in  addition  to  the 
contract  price.  If  Shaksper  was  a  man  of  ordinary  intelli- 
gence, with  the  ability  to  read  and  write,  his  conduct  as 
above  detailed  was  inexcusable.  But  his  silence  and 
sufferance  as  to  this  and  all  the  other  plays  can  be  explained 
and  excused,  if  he  was  as  ignorant  as  his  handwriting 
proclaims  him  to  be.  It  can  be  also  excused  on  another 
very  reasonable  hypothesis.  If  one  of  the  writers  of  the 
play  was  known  to  the  publishers  as  the  William  Shake- 
speare to  whom  the  authorship  of  the  book  was  credited 
by  Pavier  or  if  the  writers  of  the  play  directed  Pavier  to 
credit  it  to  Shaksper,  then  his  silence  would  be  excusable; 
or  he  could  be  excused  on  the  following  ground — his 
name  was  Shaksper  and  not  Shakespeare  or  Shake-speare, 
and  no  book  was  printed  in  the  name  of  William  Shaksper 
—the  name  which  was  his  true  name. 

Again,  in  the  year  1605,  Nathaniel  Butter  printed  a 
curious  old  play  called  the  ''London  Prodigal"  as  a  com- 


100  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

position  of  William  Shakespeare,  when  in  truth  and  in 
fact  Shaksper  had  nothing  to  do  with  its  composition, 
and  yet  Shaksper  suffered  this  falsehood  to  pass  current 
with  the  reading  public  and  quietly  absorbed  the  honor 
which  the  play  gave  to  his  name. 

Shortly  after,  in  the  year  1607,  the  play  of  The  Puritan,, 
or  The  Widow  of  Watling  Street,  appeared  as  composed 
by  W.  S.,  and  in  1608  the  play  of  A  Yorkshire  Tragedy 
was  printed  with  the  name  of  William  Shakespeare  as  the 
author  affixed  to  it.  Yet  although  he  wrote  neither  of 
these  plays,  he  suffered  them  to  pass  current  under  his 
name.  I  think  that  the  fair  and  proper  deduction  to 
make  from  these  facts  is  that  Shaksper,  by  reason  of  his 
illiteracy,  knew  nothing  of  what  Phillips  calls  the  knavery 
of  these  publishers.  Nevertheless,  Phillips  himself  admits 
that  Shaksper  was  guilty  of  a  fraud  and  deception  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  year  1599.  On  page  178  of  the  first 
volume  of  his  "Outlines"  he  says,  "  Towards  the  close  of 
this  year,  1599,  a  renewed  attempt  was  made  by  the  poet 
to  obtain  a  grant  of  coat-armour  to  his  father.  It  was 
now  proposed  to  impale  the  arms  of  Shakespeare  with 
those  of  Arden,  and  on  each  occasion  ridiculous  state- 
ments were  made  respecting  the  claims  of  the  two  families. 
Both  were  really  descended  from  obscure  English  country 
yeomen,  but  the  heralds  made  out  that  the  predecessors 
of  John  Shakespeare  were  rewarded  by  the  Crown  for 
distinguished  services,  and  that  his  wife's  ancestors  were 
entitled  to  armorial  bearings." 

A  man  who  would  be  guilty  of  such  deception  would 
not  hesitate  to  impliedly  claim  by  his  silence  the  author- 
ship of  plays  which  he  never  wrote,  and  which  he  really 
did  not  have  the  ability  to  write. 


INDIFFERENCE    TO    LITERARY    PROPRIETIES.  101 

The  reader,  of  course,  understands  that  PhiUips  was  a 
believer  in  the  abihty  of  Shaksper  to  write  the  plays. 

Let  us  briefly  consider  the  excuse  of  indifference  sug- 
gested by  Phillips,  Collier,  and  the  other  advocates  for 
Shaksper,  as  applied  to  living  writers  of  our  day  and 
generation.  I  saj^  li\'ing  wTiters,  because  in  the  case  of 
dead  poets,  such  for  instance  as  Edgar  Allen  Poe,  the 
public  might  be  deceived  by  the  publication  after  his 
death  of  a  poem  composed  by  a  competent  writer  in 
imitation  of  his  style,  and  falsely  attributed  to  Poe.  Such 
a  poem,  cleverly  executed,  might  pass  current  as  his 
for  all  time,  because  his  voice  could  not  be  raised  nor  his 
words  written  to  warn  the  public  in  contradiction  of  the 
imposition. 

But  if  a  poem  should  now  be  published  by  any  respect- 
able publishing  house  in  the  United  States  or  Great  Brit- 
ain, purporting  on  the  face  of  the  publication  to  be  the 
work  of  Rudyard  Kipling,  or  if  a  novel  should  be  issued 
in  the  name  of  Lewis  Wallace,  when  in  fact  Kipling  did 
not  wTite  the  poem  nor  Wallace  the  novel,  the  distin- 
guished writers  whose  names  were  thus  fraudulently  used 
would  hasten  to  expose  the  deceit  attempted  to  be  prac- 
ticed upon  the  literary  world  by  the  most  public  and 
emphatic  denials  of  the  authorship.  This  they  would  do 
whether  the  contents  of  the  book  or  books,  falsely  attrib- 
uted to  them,  were  good  or  bad,  interesting  or  stupid, 
or  whether  the  surnames  as  printed  in  the  book  were 
altered  a  little  from  their  own,  as  in  the  case  of  the  plays 
and  poems  cited  in  this  chapter  which  were  issued  from 
the  London  press  in  Shaksper's  time  in  a  name  somewhat 
like  that  of  Shaksper. 


CHAPTER  X. 
Spenser's  ''pleasant  willy"  was  not  shaksper. 

"  //  imputation  and  strong  circumstances, 
Which  lead  directly  to  the  door  of  truth, 
Will  give  you  satisfaction,  you  may  have  it." 

—Othello,  iii.  3. 

False  statements  about  Shaksper,  after  frequent  repe- 
tition, pass  current  as  truths  with  those  who  are  not  care- 
ful students,  and  this  is  particularly  the  case  with  the 
Shaksper  worshipers  as  to  Spenser's  allusion  to  "  Pleasant 
Willy."  The  passage  referred  to  is  from  Spenser's  "  Tears 
of  the  Muses,"  printed  in  1591,  and  reads  as  follows: 

"  And  he  the  man,  whom  Nature's  self  has  made 
To  mock  herself,  and  truth  to  imitate, 
With  kindly  counter  under  mimic  shade, 
Our  pleasant  Willy,  oh!  is  dead  of  late: 
With  whom  all  joy  and  jolly  merriment 
Is  also  deaded,  and  in  dolor  drent." 

The  best  scholars  among  those  who  have  never  ques- 
tioned Shaksper's  authorship  of  the  plays  now  admit  that 
these  lines  have  no  reference  whatever  to  William  Shak- 
sper. The  notion  that  Spenser  had  Shaksper  in  mind 
would  not  merit  consideration  at  all  were  it  not  for  the 
fact  that  Knight  and  Collier  started  the  unwarrantable 
suggestion.  I  am  reminded  here  of  A.  Conan  Doyle's 
warning  to  readers  as  to  the  difficulty  experienced  in 
detaching  the  framework  of  fact — of  absolute,  undeniable 
fact — from  the  embellishment  and  romance  of  theorists  and 
essayists.     In  what  I  am  now  about  to  quote  from  Collier. 


''pleasant  willy"  was  not  shaksper.         lOS 

the  reader  will  notice  how  this  writer  first  assumes  a  mere 
hypothesis  to  be  a  fact  and  then  adroitly  attempts  to 
bolster  up  his  guess  by  the  statement  that  although 
Shaksper's  surname  is  not  given,  there  can  be  no  hesita- 
tion in  applying  the  allusion  to  him.  Collier,  in  the 
beginning  of  his  Chapter  7  of  his  "Life  of  Shaksper,"  says: 
"  We  come  now  to  the  earliest  known  allusion  to  Shak- 
sper as  a  dramatist;  and  although  his  surname  is  not  given, 
we  apprehend  that  there  can  be  no  hesitation  in  applying 
what  is  said  to  him.  It  is  contained  in  Spenser's  '  Tears 
of  the  Muses,'  a  poem  printed  in  1591.  The  application 
of  the  passage  to  Shaksper  has  been  much  contested,  but 
the  difficulty  in  our  minds  is  how  the  lines  are  to  be  ex- 
plained by  reference  to  any  other  dramatist  of  the  time, 
even  supposing  as  we  have  supposed  and  believe,  that 
our  great  poet  was  at  thisjperiod  only  rising  into  notice 
as  a  writer  for  the  stage.  We  will  first  quote  the  lines 
literatim  as  they  stand  in  the  edition  of  1591  and  after- 
wards say  something  of  the  claims  of  others  to  the  dis- 
tinction they  confer. 

'And  he  the  man,  whom  Nature's  self  had  made 
To  mock  herself,  and  truth  to  imitate. 
With  kindly  counter  under  mimic  shade, 
Our  pleasant  Willy,  oh !  is  dead  of  late ; 
With  whom  all  joy  and  jolly  merriment 
Is  also  deaded,  and  in  dolour  drent. 

'Instead  thereof,  scoffing  scurrilitic. 
And  scornful  follie  with  contempt  is  crept, 
Rolling  in  rymes  of  shameless  ribaudrie. 
Without  regard  or  due  decorum  kept; 
Each  idle  wit  at  will  presumes  to  make 
And  doth  the  learned's  taske  upon  him  take. 


104  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

'But  that  same  gentle  spirit  from  whose  pen 
Large  streams  of  honnie  and  sweete  nectar  flowe, 
Scorning  the  boldness  of  such  base  born  men 
^Vhich  dare  their  follies  forth  so  rashlie  throwe, 
Doth  rather  choose  to  sit  in  idle  cell 
Than  so  himself  to  mockerie  to  sell.' 

''The  most  striking  of  these  lines  with  reference  to  our 
present  inquiry  is,  'Our  pleasant  Willy,  oh!  is  dead  of 
late,'  and  hence  if  it  stood  alone,  we  might  infer  that 
Willy,  whoever  he  might  be,  was  actually  dead;  but  the 
latter  part  of  the  third  stanza  we  have  quoted  shows  us 
in  what  sense  the  word  'dead'  is  to  be  understood:  Willy 
was  dead  as  far  as  regarded  the  admirable  dramatic 
talents  he  had  already  displayed  which  had  enabled  him 
even  before  1591  to  outstrip  all  living  rivalry  and  to 
afford  the  most  certain  indications  of  the  still  greater 
things  Spenser  saw  he  would  accomplish.  He  was  dead 
because  he  '  Doth  rather  choose  to  sit  in  idle  cell,  Than  so 
himself  to  mockerie  to  sell.'  It  is  to  be  borne  in  mind 
that  these  stanzas  and  six  others  are  put  into  the  mouth 
of  Thalia,  whose  lamentation  on  the  degeneracy  of  the 
stage,  especially  in  comedy,  follows  those  of  Calliope  and 
Melpomene.  Rowe,  under  the  impression  that  the  whole 
passage  referred  to  Shakespeare,  introduced  it  into  his 
'Life'  in  his  first  edition  of  1709,  but  silently  withdrew 
it  in  his  second  edition  of  1714;  his  reason  perhaps  was 
that  he  did  not  see  how  before  1591  Shaksper  could  have 
shown  that  he  merited  the  character  given  of  him  and 
his  productions." 

Collier  was  in  the  habit  (following  Malone's  example) 
of  conjecturing  as  to  Shaksper's  acts  and  occupation. 
Thus  in  Chapter  4  of  his  padded  biography  of   Shaksper 


"pleasant  willy"  was  not  shaksper.         105 

he  says,  "We  decidedly  concur  with  Malone  in  thinking 
that  after  Shaksper  quitted  the  free  school,  he  was  em- 
ployed in  the  office  of  an  attorney."  This  conjecture, 
which  does  not  even  have  the  benefit  of  tradition  for 
a  foundation,  gave  the  cue  to  Walters,  who  does  not 
hesitate  to  treat  Collier's  guess  as  a  biographical  fact. 
So  in  his  attempt  (unwarranted  by  the  facts)  to  identify 
Shaksper  as  "pleasant  Willy,"  he  indulges  in  a  wild  con- 
jecture that  Shaksper  manufactured  great  works  which 
have  not  come  down  to  us.  In  Chapter  7,  referring  to 
this   "pleasant  Willy"  designation,  he  says: 

"Although  we  feel  assured  that  he  had  not  composed 
any  of  his  greatest  works  before  1591,  he  may  have  done 
much,  besides  what  has  come  dowTi  to  us,  amply  to  war- 
rant Spenser  in  applauding  him  beyond  all  his  theatrical 
contemporaries." 

Not  being  sure  that  the  foregoing  guess  would  pass 
muster,  he  indulges  in  another,  as  follows:  "There  is 
some  little  ground  for  thinking  that  Spenser,  if  not  a 
Warwickshire  man,  was  at  one  time  a  resident  in  War- 
wickshire, and  later  in  life  he  may  have  become  acquainted 
with  Shakespeare." 

Spenser  clearly  had  reference  to  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  who 
was  known  among  his  associates  as  "Willy."  The  reader 
will  find  this  fact  distinctly  stated  in  Morley's  English 
Men  of  Letters,  in  the  volume  on  Spenser  by  Dean  Church 
as  cited  by  Appleton  Morgan  in  his  "Shakespeare  Myth"  on 
page  148.  In  an  eclogue  on  Sidney's  death  printed  in 
Davison's  "Poetical  Rhapsodies"  in  1602,  Sir  Philip  Sidney 
is  lamented  in  almost  every  stanza  by  the  name  of  "  Willy." 
Sidney  died  in  the  year  1586,  and  the  reference  in  the 
poem  is  to  a  person  lately  deceased. 


106  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

The  late  Richard  Grant  White,  who  was  a  zealous 
anti-Baconian,  promptly  and  justly  repudiates  the  Knight 
and  Collier  statement.  In  his  "Memoirs  of  Shakespeare" 
he  says:  "In  Spenser's  Tears  of  the  Muses,  printed  in 
1591,  the  following  passage  occurs, 

'And  he  the  man,  whom  Nature's  self  had  made 
To  mock  herself,  and  truth  to  imitate, 
With  kindly  counter  under  mimic  shade, 
Our  pleasant  Willy,  oh !  is  dead  of  late ; 
With  whom  all  joy  and  jolly  merriment 
Is  also  deaded,  and  in  dolor  drent.' 

"This  passage  has  been  held  to  refer  to  Shakespeare, 
chiefly,  it  would  seem,  because  of  the  name  'Willy.'  But 
that,  like  Shepherd,  was  not  uncommonly  used,  merely 
to  name  a  poet,  and  was  distinctly  applied  to  Sir  Philip 
Sidney  in  an  eclogue  preserved  by  Davison's  Poetical 
Rhapsodies,  published  in  1602.  And  the  Tears  of  the 
Muses  had  certainly  been  written  before  1590,  when 
Shakespeare  could  not  have  risen  to  the  position  assigned 
by  the  first  poet  of  the  age  to  the  subject  of  this  passage,  and 
probably  in  1580  when  Shakspere  was  a  boy  of  sixteen." 

The  Shaksperites  try  also  to  make  the  public  believe 
that  Spenser  refers  to  Shaksper  in  the  following  lines 
written  in  1591  and  found  in  Colin  Clout's  Come  Home 
Again : 

"  And  there  though  last  not  least  is  Action, 
A  gentler  shepherd  may  nowhere  be  found, 
Whose  muse,  full  of  high  thought's  invention, 
Doth — like  himself — heroically  sound." 

The  best  answer  to  this  guess  of  the  commentators  is 
that  of  Morgan,  who  says:  "It  is  difficult  to  imagine  how 


"pleasant  willy"  was  not  shaksper.         107 

this  can  possibly  be  more  than  mere  speculation,  since 
Spenser  certainly  left  no  annotation  explanatory  of  the 
passage,  and  it  does  not  identify  itself  as  a  reference  to 
Shakespeare,"  vide  "Shakespearean  Myth,"  p.  147,  note. 
Since  the  ancient  Action  was  a  physician,  the  verse  might 
refer  to  Thomas  Lodge,  the  well-known  poet,  or  it  would 
appropriately  refer  to  Michael  Drayton,  whose  muse  was 
full  of  "high  thought's  invention";  whose  name,  that  of 
the  archangel,  like  his  muse,  did  sound  heroically  and 
who  was  known  among  all  his  contemporaries  as  the 
gentle  Shepherd  Rowland. 

Robert  Tofte,  translator  of  Ariosto's  Satires,  speaks  of 
Drayton  as  "not  unworthily  bearing  the  name  of  the 
chief  archangel  (Michael)  singing  after  his  soul-ravishing 
"manner."  Asearlyas  1593  Draj'ton  had  published  "Idea," 
the  "Shepherd's  Garland,"  fashioned  in  nine  eclogues,  and 
"Rowland's  Sacrifice  to  the  Muses." 

It  is  because  no  men  of  his  time  corresponded  with 
Shaksper  that  there  has  been  a  straining  on  the  part  of 
the  Shaksper  advocates  to  fit  contemporary  verses  to 
their  idol. 

An  analysis  of  Collier's  argument  will  plainly  reveal 
its  utter  absurdity  and  ridiculousness. 

He  starts  out  by  averring  that  the  earliest  known 
allusion  to  Shaksper  as  a  dramatist  is  contained  in  Spen- 
ser's "Tears  of  the  Muses."  In  the  very  next  sentence  he 
admits  that  Shaksper's  surname  is  not  mentioned  at  all. 
He  then  declares  that  there  can  be  no  hesitation  in  apply- 
ing what  Spenser  wrote  to  Shaksper,  while  in  the  very 
next  sentence  he  admits  not  only  that  there  has  been 
hesitation  but  also  that  the  application  of  the  passage  to 
Shaksper  has  been  very  much  contested.     A  little  farther 


108  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

on,  he  declares  that  he  supposes  and  beUeves  that  Shaksper 
was  before  1591  only  rising  into  notice  as  a  writer  for  the 
stage,  and  then  in  order  to  fit  Shaksper  to  the  Willy  of 
the  poet,  as  one  not  actually  dead  but  sleeping  or  quiescent 
in  idle  cell,  and  rejecting  his  belief  just  before  expressed, 
he  avers  that  Willy  was  only  dead  as  far  as  regarded  the 
admirable  dramatic  talents  he  had  already  displayed — 
"  talents  which  had  enabled  him  even  before  1591  to 
outstrip  all  living  rivalry."  Summarized,  the  advocate 
says  that  Shaksper  is  known  to  have  been  alluded  to, 
then  that  Shaksper  is  not  named  and  therefore  not  known 
as  the  person  alluded  to.  No  one,  he  avers,  hesitates  to 
apply  the  passage  to  Shaksper.  In  the  very  next  line  he 
declares  that  very  many  deny  its  application  to  Shaksper. 
The  advocate  believes  that  when  Spenser  wrote  the  poem, 
Shaksper  was  only  rising  into  notice  as  a  writer  for  the 
stage.  He  also  believes  that  Shaksper's  talents,  when 
Spenser  wrote  the  poem,  were  so  great  that  he  outstripped 
all  other  dramatists  and  poets.  In  one  sentence  he  makes 
an  assertion.  In  the  next  he  denies  what  he  asserted, 
and  this  he  does  three  times  in  succession. 

The  only  mischief  caused  by  such  partisan  reckless- 
ness is  that  when  the  biographer  of  the  much-lauded 
Shaksper  comes  along  who  has  no  time  or  inclination  to 
examine  into  the  facts,  he  accepts  the  conjectures  and 
assertions  of  such  writers  as  Collier  as  facts,  and  palms 
them  off  as  facts  on  the  unsuspecting  public. 


CHAPTER  XI. 


Daniel's  letter  to  egerton  does  not 
refer  to  shaksper. 


"A  snapper-up  of  unconsidered  trifles.'' 

—The  Winter's  Tale,  iv,  3. 

Collier,  in  the  first  volume  of  his  book  entitled  "  Shake- 
speare's Complete  Works,"  at  page  70,  undertakes  to  prove, 
first,  that  Shaksper  is  referred  to  in  a  letter  from  the 
poet  and  dramatist,  Samuel  Daniel,  to  Sir  Thomas  Egerton, 
the  original  of  which  is  preserved  at  Bridgewater  House, 
and,  secondly,  that  the  letter  shows  that  Shaksper  en- 
deavored to  procure,  in  1603,  the  office  of  Master  of  the 
Queen's  Revels.  Collier  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  one 
paragraph  in  it  refers  expressly  to  Shaksper,  though  not 
by  name.  Verplanck,  in  his  edition  of  the  plays,  hesitates 
to  follow  and  endorse  Collier  in  his  broad  statement  and 
candidly  admits  that  the  letter  might  be  so  construed  as 
to  apply  to  Michael  Drayton.  If  now  the  letter  or  any 
paragraph  of  it  refers  expressly  to  William  Shaksper,  as 
Collier  and  the  Shaksperites  assert,  then  there  is  an  end 
of  controversy,  for  Daniel  was  a  just  and  truthful  man, 
and  if  the  letter  speaks  of  Shaksper  as  "  the  author  of  plays 
now  daily  presented  on  the  public  stages  of  London," 
the  argument  for  Shaksper's  ability  to  compose  and  write 
poems  and  plays  is  unanswerable.  I  will  insert  the  letter 
here  in  its  entirety,  and  I  am  confident  that  after  a  care- 
ful perusal  of  it,  the  unprejudiced  reader  will  agree  with 
me,  first,  that  there  is  no  reference  whatever  in  the  letter 


110  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

to  Shaksper  or  to  any  one  else  except  Michael  Drayton, 
and  secondly,  that  at  the  very  time  when  Daniel  wrote 
the  letter,  Drayton  was  the  author  of  the  plays  referred 
to  in  the  letter  as  presented  daily  on  the  public  stages  of 
London,  and  also  that  he,  Drayton,  was  then  an  actor 
in  the  King's  Company  of  comedians  and  an  applicant 
also  for  the  position  of  Master  of  the  Queen's  Revels. 
Daniel's  letter,  which  I  give  in  full,  reads  as  follows: 

'^To  the  right  honorable 

Sir  Thomas  Egerton,  Knight, 

Lord-Keeper  of  the  Great  Seale  of  England. 

"1  will  not  indeavour,  Right  honorable,  to  thanke  you 
in  words  for  this  new  great  and  unlookt  for  favor  shown 
unto  me,  where  by  I  am  bound  to  you  forever,  and  hope 
one  day  with  true  heart  and  simple  skill  to  prove  that  I 
am  not  unmindful.  Most  earnestly  do  I  wish  I  could 
praise  as  your  Honor  has  known  to  deserve,  for  then 
should  I,  like  my  master  Spenser,  whose  memory  your 
Honor  cherisheth,  leave  behind  me  some  worthy  work  to 
be  treasured  by  posterity.  What  my  poor  muse  could 
perform  in  haste  is  here  set  down,  and  though  it  be  far 
below  what  other  poets  and  better  pens  have  written,  it 
Cometh  from  a  grateful  heart  and  therefore  may  be 
accepted.  I  shall  now  be  able  to  live  free  from  those 
cares  and  troubles  that  hitherto  have  been  my  con- 
tinual  and   wearisome  companions. 

"But  a  little  time  is  past  since  I  was  called  upon  to 
thank  your  honor  for  my  brother's  advancement,  and  now 
I  thank  you  for  my  own;  which  double  kindness  will 
always  receive  double  gratefulness  at  both  our  hands. 
I  can  not  but  know  that  I  am  less  deserving  than  some 


Daniel's  letter  to  egerton.  Ill 

that  sued  by  other  of  the  nobihty  unto  her  Majesty  for 
this  boon;  if  Mr.  Drayton,  my  good  friend  had  been 
chosen,  I  should  not  have  murmured,  for  sure  I  am  that 
he  would  have  filled  it  most  excellently;  but  it  seemeth 
to  mine  humble  judgment  that  one  who  is  the  author  of 
plays  now  daily  presented  on  the  public  stages  of  London, 
and  the  possessor  of  no  small  gains,  and  moreover  him- 
self an  actor  in  the  King's  company  of  Comedians,  could 
not  with  reason  pretend  to  be  Mr.  of  the  Queenes  Ma'ties 
revels,  for  as  much  as  he  would  sometimes  be  asked  to 
approve  and  allow  of  his  own  writings.  Therefore  he  and 
more  of  like  quality  can  not  be  justly  disappointed  because 
through  your  honor's  gracious  interposition,  the  chance 
was  haply  mine. 

"I  owe  this  and  all  else  to  your  honor,  and  if  ever  I 
have  time  and  ability  to  finish  any  noble  undertaking, 
as  God  grant  one  day  I  shall,  the  work  will  rather  be 
your  honor's  than  mine.  God  maketh  a  poet,  but  his 
creation  would  be  in  vain,  if  patrons  did  not  make  him 
to  live.  Your  Honor  hath  ever  shown  yourself  the  friend 
of  desert,  and  pity  it  were  if  this  should  be  the  first  excep- 
tion to  the  rule.  It  shall  not  be  while  my  poor  wit  and 
strength  do  remain  to  me,  though  the  verses  which  I  now 
send,  be  indeed  no  proof  of  mine  ability.  I  only  intreat 
your  Honor  to  accept  the  same,  the  rather  as  an  earnest 
of  good  w\\\  than  as  an  example  of  my  good  deed.  In 
all  things  I  am  your  Honor's  most  bounden  in  duty  and 
observance.  Samuel  Daniel." 

As  I  interpret  the  letter,  Daniel  intimates  that  others 
had  applied  for  the  place  of  Master  of  the  Revels  through 
advocates  of   the  nobility  class;  and   that   if  his  friend 


112  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Michael  Drayton  had  been  chosen,  he,  Daniel,  would  not 
have  murmured  because  he,  Drayton,  would  have  filled 
the  position  most  excellently;  but  yet  it  seemed  to  him, 
Daniel,  that  one  who  was  the  author  of  plays  then  daily 
exhibited  on  the  stage  ought  not  to  be  a  judge  when  his 
own  plays  had  to  be  approved  or  rejected,  since  he  might 
be  biased,  and  besides  his  good  friend  Drayton  was  an 
actor  in  the  King's  company  of  comedians. 

The  letter  clearly  refers  to  Drayton  and  not  to  Shaksper. 

Was  Drayton  the  author  of  plays  then  daily  acted  on 
the  London  stage?  Let  him  answer  for  himself.  I  quote 
from  Drayton's  "Idea,"  Sonnet  47: 

"  In  pride  of  wit,  when  high  desire  of  fame 
Gave  life  and  courage  to  my  labouring  pen. 
And  first  the  sound  and  virtue  of  my  name 
Won  grace  and  credit  in  the  ears  of  men; 
With  those  the  thronged  theatres  that  press, 
I  in  the  circuit  for  the  laurel  strove ; 
Where  the  full  praise,  I  freely  must  confess, 
In  heat  of  blood  a  modest  mind  might  move. 
With  shouts  and  claps  at  every  little  pause 
Wlien  the  proud  round  on  every  side  hath  rung, 
Sadly  I  sit  unmoved  with  the  applause. 
As  though  to  me  it  nothing  did  belong: 

No  public  glory  vainly  I  pursue. 

All  that  I  seek  is  to  eternize  you." 

As  confirmatory  of  Drayton's  ability  as  a  poet  and  writer 
of  plays,  I  quote  here  from  Richard  Barnfield's  "Remem- 
brances of  some  English  Poets,"  published  in  1598: 

"  And  Drayton,  whose  well-written  tragedies 
And  sweet  epistles  soar  thy  fame  to  skies, 
Thy  learned  name  is  equal  with  the  rest 
Whose  stately  numbers  are  so  well  addresst." 


Daniel's  letter  to  egertox.  113 

In  this  poem,  Barnfield  puts  Drayton  in  his  eulogy- 
next  to  Spenser.  Here  is  a  distinct  reference  to  tragedies 
written  by  Michael  Drayton,  which  had  made  him  famous; 
and  in  confirmation  thereof,  Henslowe's  Diary  shows  con- 
clusively that  he  had  written  plays  for  the  theatre  before 
1598.  Who  now  of  the  nobility  would  have  recommended 
Drayton? 

The  earliest  helper  of  Drayton  to  an  education  was 
Sir  Henry  Goodere  of  Polesworth.  He  was  a  staunch 
friend  of  Drayton  all  his  life.  In  his  poetical  epistle  to 
Henry  Reynolds,  Drayton  says  that  he  had  been  a  page 
attached  to  the  household  of  Sir  Henry,  and  in  another 
dedicatory  address  he  acknowledged  his  indebtedness  to 
him  for  his  education.  Sir  Walter  Aston  was  also  an 
earnest  patron  and  energetic  helper  of  Drayton.  In 
1603,  Drayton  was  made  an  Esquire  by  Sir  Walter  at 
his  investiture  as  a  Knight  of  the  Bath.  Lucy,  Countess 
of  Bedford,  Sir  John  Harrington,  Drummond,  and  Sir 
William  Alexander  were  admirers  and  devoted  friends. 
On  page  181  of  Drummond's  "Life,"  it  appears  that  on 
July  14, 1631,  Drayton  wrote  to  Drummond  that  he  visited 
a.  knight's  house  in  Gloucestershire  yearly  for  two  or  three 
months.  As  the  letter  was  addressed  from  Clifford  in 
Gloucestershire,  it  was  probably  there  that  he  made  these 
annual  visits.  There  is  a  tradition  that  Drayton  was 
employed  by  Queen  Elizabeth  on  a  diplomatic  mission  to 
Scotland.  In  an  obscure  passage  in  the  Owl,  1604,  he 
states  that  he  went  in  preferm'-n  "unto  the  happy  North; 
and  there  arrived,  disgrace  was  all  my  gain." 

If  search  were  made  for  those  applications  for  the 
position  referred  to  by  Daniel,  and  if  they  could  be  un- 
earthed,  I  think  that  it  would  be  found  that  no  such 


114  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

person  as  William  Shaksper  ever  applied  for  the  position 
of  Master  of  the  Queen's  Revels. 

Let  us  suppose  that  in  aid  of  the  truth  some  person 
having  the  leisure  and  the  means  to  do  so  should  under- 
take to  find  the  list  of  names  of  the  playwriters  to  whom 
Daniel  refers  in  his  letter  to  the  Lord-Keeper,  and  the 
names  also  of  those  of  the  nobility  who  sued  to  her  majesty 
for  this  boon.  What  a  contribution  that  would  be  to  the 
cause  of  truth  and  in  settlement  of  the  question  of  the 
ability  of  Shaksper  to  write  a  play  or  to  write  at  all !  Who, 
besides  Daniel,  were  the  several  applicants  for  the  post 
of  Master  of  the  Queen's  Revels,  and  what  did  they  urge 
in  behalf  of  their  respective  claims?  What  did  these 
noblemen,  to  whom  Daniel  refers,  write  about  the  appli- 
cants to  her  majesty?  If  the  record  or  the  papers,  or 
either  of  them,  could  be  found,  and  published  exactly  as 
they  appear,  it  would  go  far  to  bring  the  truth  to  light. 

I  might  suggest  the  same  as  to  William  Shaksper's 
estate.  It  should  have  been  settled  according  to  the 
laws  of  England,  and  an  inventory  of  his  goods  and  chattels 
and  of  all  his  personal  estate  should  be  preserved  in  the 
proper  probate  archives,  or  an  official  record  thereof 
should  have  been  kept.  If  that  could  be  found,  it  would 
be  a  welcome  addition  to  the  meagre  life-history  of  the 
man.  If  he  had  died  the  owner  of  books  and  manu- 
scripts prepared  by  him,  it  would  have  conclusively 
settled  the  question  of  Shaksper's  ability  to  write  plays. 

Before  passing  from  the  consideration  of  the  letter  of 
thanks  from  Daniel  to  Lord-Keeper  Egerton  I  must  ask 
the  reader,  whether  a  believer  in  the  Shaksper  claim  or 
not,  to  analyze  it  carefully  for  the  purpose  of  determining 
whether  L  am  right  or  wrong  in  my  construction  of  it. 


Daniel's  letter  to  egerton.  115 

I  repeat  that  I  interpret  it  thus — that  Daniel,  the  writer 
of  the  letter,  concedes  that  if  his  good  friend,  Drayton, 
had  been  chosen  as  Master  of  the  Queen's  Revels,  he, 
Drayton,  would  have  graced  the  position;  but  that  as  he, 
Drayton,  was  the  author  of  plays  then  daily  presented 
on  the  stage,  he  would  not  be  a  competent  and  impartial 
judge  as  to  his  own  productions.  The  special  reference 
is  to  Michael  Drayton.  And  then  Daniel  alludes  in  a 
general  way  to  other  applicants  for  the  position. 

While  Collier  is  mistaken  in  attributing  Daniel's  refer- 
ence to  the  authorship  of  plaj^s  now  daily  presented  on 
the  public  stages  of  London  to  Shaksper,  he  has  enabled 
me  to  again  direct  the  attention,  especially  of  the  English 
reader  of  the  letter,  to  the  opportunity  afforded,  and  which 
may  exist,  of  finding  some  clue  to  the  names  of  those 
besides  Drayton  who  did  apply  to  Egerton  for  the  posi- 
tion which  Daniel  thanked  him  for  so  heartily. 

The  reader,  of  course,  will  understand  that  the  poem 
to  which  Daniel  alludes  in  his  letter  to  the  Lord-Keeper 
had  no  reference  whatever  to  the  applications  or  the  ap- 
plicants for  the  place  which  Daniel  secured.  It  was 
merely  a  complimentary  effusion  in  praise  of  Daniel's 
benefactor. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

SHAKSPER  NOT  THE  SHAKESCENE  OF  ROBERT  GREENE. 

"He  vrill  give  the  devil  his  due.'' 

—First  Henry  IV,  i,  2. 

I  approach  the  discussion  of  the  proposition  which 
heads  this  chapter  with  the  hope  that  the  unprejudiced 
reader  will  carefully  and  dispassionately  consider  the 
statements  of  fact  made  and  the  arguments  adduced  with 
the  view  solely  of  eliciting  the  truth.  I  will  try  to  show, 
if  I  can,  the  falsity  of  the  dictum  of  Malone,  implicitly 
followed,  without  examination,  by  the  whole  army  of 
commentators  except  Fleay,  that  one  of  the  persons 
chiefly  referred  to  in  Greene's  pamphlet  and  Chettle's 
apology  was  William  Shaksper  of  Stratford-on-Avon.  In 
order  to  be  fair  and  candid  and  to  give  the  reader  an 
opportunity  to  use  his  own  full  and  free  judgment,  I  will 
first  state  the  precedent  uncontradicted  facts  and  then 
set  out  the  text  on  which  Malone's  guess  is  based. 

Robert  Greene,  a  dissolute  but  gifted  poet  and  drama- 
tist of  England,  died  in  great  poverty  and  distress  both 
of  mind  and  body  on  the  third  day  of  September,  1592. 
Shortly  before  his  death  he  wrote  a  book,  or  rather  a 
pamphlet,  called  "  Greene's  Groat's-worth  of  Wit,  bought 
with  a  Milhon  of  Repentance."  It  was  originally  published 
in  1592,  having  been  entered  at  Stationer's  Hall  on  the 
20th  day  of  September,  1592,  but  the  earliest  edition 
known  was  printed  in  1596.  This  little  work  contains 
a  reference  to  two  persons,  whose  names  are  not  mentioned, 


SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESCENE.  117 

but  because  and  only  because  the  word  ''Shake-scene"  is 
used  therein,  it  has  been  taken  for  granted  by  Malone 
and  the  commentators  who  have  followed  him  that  Wil- 
liam Shaksper  was  referred  to. 

I  will  reproduce  here  Collier's  version  of  the  reference, 
so  that  I  can  not  be  accused  of  garbling  the  text.  All 
students  of  Shakespeare  criticism  know  that  Collier  was  a 
pertinacious  and  sometimes  unreasonable  asserter  of  the 
Shaksper  claim.  In  examining  and  considering  the  quota- 
tion, the  reader  nmst  strike  out  the  words  in  parenthesis, 
because  they  are  not  in  the  original  text  but  are  deluding 
interpolations  of  the  partisan  Collier.  I  give  Collier's 
exact  words: 

"  During  the  prevalence  of  the  infectious  malady  of 
1592,  although  not  in  consequence  of  it,  died  one  of  the 
most  notorious  and  distinguished  of  the  literary  men  of 
the  time, — Robert  Greene.  He  expired  on  the  3rd  of 
September,  1592,  and  left  behind  him  a  work  purporting 
to  have  been  written  during  his  last  illness:  it  was  pub- 
lished a  few  months  afterwards  by  Henry  Chettle,  a 
fellow  dramatist,  under  the  title  of  'A  Groat's-worth  of 
Wit,  bought  with  a  Million  of  Repentance,'  bearing  the 
date  of  1592,  and  preceded  by  an  address  from  Greene 
'To  those  Gentlemen,  his  quondam  acquaintance,  who 
spend  their  wits  in  making  Plays.'  Here  we  meet  with 
the  second  notice  of  Shakespeare,  not  indeed  by  name, 
but  with  such  a  near  approach  to  it,  that  nobody  can 
entertain  a  moment's  doubt  that  he  was  intended.  It  is 
necessary  to  quote  the  whole  passage,  and  to  observe, 
before  we  do  so,  that  Greene  is  addressing  himself  par- 
ticularly to  Marlowe,  Lodge,  and  Peele,  and  urging  them 
to  break  off  all  connection  with  players: — 'Base  minded 


118  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

men  all  three  of  you,  if  by  my  misery  ye  be  not  warned; 
for  unto  none  of  you,  like  me,  sought  those  burs  to  cleave; 
those  puppets,  I  mean,  that  speak  from  our  mouths,  those 
anticks  garnished  in  our  colours.  Is  it  not  strange  that 
I,  to  whom  they  all  have  been  beholding;  is  it  not  like 
that  you,  to  whom  they  have  all  been  beholding,  shall 
(were  ye  in  that  case  that  I  am  now)  be  both  of  them  at 
once  forsaken?  Yes,  trust  them  not;  for  there  is  an 
upstart  crow,  beautified  with  our  feathers,  that  with  his 
Tiger's  heart  wrapp'd  in  a  player's  hide,  supposes  he  is  as 
well  able  to  bombast  out  blank- verse,  as  the  best  of  you: 
and,  being  an  absolute  Johannes  Fac-totum,  is,  in  his  own 
conceit,  the  only  Shake-scene  in  a  country.  O!  that  I 
might  entreat  your  rare  wits  to  be  employed  in  more 
profitable  courses,  and  let  these  apes  imitate  your  past 
excellence,  and  never  more  acquaint  them  with  your 
admired  inventions.' 

"The  chief  and  obvious  purpose  of  this  address  is  to 
induce  Marlowe,  Lodge,  and  Peele  to  cease  to  write  for 
the  stage;  and,  in  the  course  of  his  exhortation,  Greene 
bitterly  inveighs  against  'an  upstart  crow,'  who  had 
availed  himself  of  the  dramatic  labours  of  others,  who 
imagined  himself  able  to  write  as  good  blank-verse  as  any 
of  his  contemporaries,  who  was  a  Johannes  Fac-totum,  and 
who,  in  his  own  opinion,  was  '  the  only  Shake-scene  in  a 
country.'  All  this  is  clearly  leveled  at  Shakespeare, 
under  the  purposely-perverted  name  of  Shake-scene,  and 
the  words,  'Tiger's  heart  wrapped  in  a  player's  hide,'  are 
a  parody  upon  a  line  in  a  historical  play  (most  likely 
by  Greene),  '0,  tiger's  heart  wrapp'd  in  a  woman's 
hide,'  from  which  Shakespeare  had  taken  his  Henry  VI, 
part  iii.    . 


SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESCENE.  119 

"From  hence  it  is  evident  that  Shakespeare,  near  the 
end  of  1592,  had  estabhshed  such  a  reputation,  and  was 
so  important  a  rival  of  the  dramatists,  who,  until  he 
came  forward,  had  kept  undisputed  possession  of  the 
stage,  as  to  excite  the  envy  and  enmity  of  Greene,  even 
during  his  last  and  fatal  illness.  It  also,  we  think,  estab- 
lishes another  point  not  hitherto  adverted  to,  viz:  that 
our  great  poet  possessed  such  variety  of  talent,  that,  for 
the  purposes  of  the  company  of  which  he  was  a  member, 
he  could  do  anything  that  he  might  be  called  upon  to 
perform:  he  was  the  Johannes  Fac-totum  of  the  associa- 
tion: he  was  an  actor,  and  he  was  a  writer  of  original 
plays,  an  adapter  and  improver  of  those  already  in  exist- 
ence (some  of  them  by  Greene,  Marlowe,  Lodge,  and 
Peele),  and  no  doubt  he  contributed  prologues  or  epi- 
logues, and  inserted  scenes,  speeches,  or  passages  on  any 
temporary  emergency.  Having  his  ready  assistance,  the 
Lord  Chamberlain's  servants  required  few  other  contri- 
butions from  rival  dramatists:  Shakespeare  was  the 
Johannes  Fac-totum  who  could  turn  his  hand  to  anything 
connected  with  his  profession,  and  who,  in  all  probability, 
had  thrown  men  like  Greene,  Lodge,  and  Peele,  and  even 
Marlowe  himself,  into  the  shade.  In  our  view,  therefore, 
the  quotation  we  have  made  from  the  '  Groat's-worth  of 
Wit'  proves  more  than  has  usually  been  collected  from  it. 

"It  was  natural  and  proper  that  Shakespeare  should 
take  offense  at  this  gross  and  public  attack:  that  he  did, 
there  is  no  doubt,  for  we  are  told  so  by  Chettle  himself, 
the  avowed  editor  of  the  '  Groat's-worth  of  Wit ' :  he  does 
not  indeed  mention  Shakespeare,  but  he  designates  him  so 
intelligibly  that  there  is  no  room  for  dispute.  Marlowe, 
also,  and  not  without  reason,  complained  of  the  manner 


120  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

in  which  Greene  had  spoken  of  him  in  the  same  work, 
but  to  him  Chettle  made  no  apology,  while  to  Shake- 
speare he  offered  all  the  amends  in  his  power. 

"His  apology  to  Shakespeare  is  contained  in  a  tract 
called  'Kind-heart's  Dream,'  which  was  published  without 
date,  but  as  Greene  expired  on  3d  September,  1592,  and 
Chettle  tells  us  in  'Kind-heart's  Dream,'  that  Greene  died 
'about  three  months'  before,  it  is  certain  that  'Kind- 
heart's  Dream'  came  out  prior  to  the  end  of  1592,  as  we 
now  calculate  the  year,  and  about  three  months  before 
it  expired,  according  to  the  reckoning  of  that  period. 
The  whole  passage  relating  to  Marlowe  and  Shakespeare 
is  highly  interesting,  and  we  therefore  extract  it  entire: 

"'About  three  months  since  died  M.  Robert  Greene, 
leaving  many  papers  in  sundry  booksellers'  hands:  among 
others  his  Groat's-worth  of  Wit,  in  which  a  letter,  written 
to  divers  play-makers,  is  offensively  by  one  or  two  of 
them  taken;  and  because  on  the  dead  they  can  not  be 
avenged,  they  wilfully  forge  in  their  conceits  a  living 
author,  and  after  tossing  it  to  and  fro,  no  remedy  but  it 
must  light  on  me.  How  I  have,  all  the  time  of  my  con- 
versing in  printing,  hindered  the  bitter  inveighing  against 
scholars,  it  hath  been  very  well  known:  and  how  in  that  I 
dealt,  I  can  sufficiently  prove.  With  neither  of  them, 
that  take  offense,  was  I  acquainted ;  and  with  one  of  them 
(Marlowe)  I  care  not  if  I  never  be:  the  other  (Shake- 
speare), whom  at  that  time  I  did  not  so  much  spare,  as 
since  I  wish  I  had,  for  that  as  I  have  moderated  the  heat 
of  living  writers,  and  might  have  used  my  own  discretion 
(especially  in  such  a  case,  the  author  being  dead)  that  I 
did  not  I  am  as  sorry  as  if  the  original  fault  had  been  my 
fault;  because  myself  have  seen  his  demeanour  no  less 


SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESCENE.  121 

civil,  than  he  excellent  in  the  quality  he  professes,  besides, 
divers  of  worship  have  reported  his  uprightness  of  dealing, 
which  argues  his  honesty,  and  his  facetious  grace  in  writ- 
ing, that  approves  his  art.  For  the  first  (Marlowe), 
whose  learning  I  reverence,  and  at  the  perusing  of  Greene's 
book  struck  out  what  then  in  conscience  I  thought  he  in 
some  displeasure  writ,  or  had  it  been  true,  yet  to  publish 
it  was  intolerable,  him  I  would  wish  to  use  me  no  worse 
than  I  deserve.' 

"The  accusation  of  Greene  against  Marlowe  had  refer- 
ence to  the  freedom  of  his  religious  opinions,  of  which  it 
is  not  necessary  here  to  say  more :  the  attack  upon  Shake- 
speare we  have  already  inserted  and  observed  upon.  In 
Chettle's  apology  to  the  latter,  one  of  the  most  noticeable 
points  is  the  tribute  he  pays  to  our  great  dramatist's  abili- 
ties as  an  actor, '  his  demeanour  no  less  civil,  than  he  excel- 
lent in  the  quality  he  professes';  the  word  'quality'  was 
applied,  at  that  date,  peculiarly  and  technically  to  acting, 
and  the  'quality'  Shakespeare  professed  was  that  of  an 
actor.  'His  facetious  grace  in  writing'  is  separately 
adverted  to,  and  admitted,  while  '  his  uprightness  of  deal- 
ing' is  attested,  not  only  by  Chettle's  own  experience, 
but  by  the  evidence  of  'divers  of  worship.'  Thus  the 
amends,  made  to  Shakespeare  for  the  envious  assault  of 
Greene,  shows  most  decisively  the  high  opinion  enter- 
tained of  him,  towards  the  close  of  1592,  as  an  actor,  an 
author,  and  a  man." 

The  reader  must  not  forget  that  Collier  has  padded  his  quo- 
tations with  proper  names  which  were  not  in  the  original. 

There  are  three  great  questions,  and  three  only,  to  be 
considered  here,  as  the  reader  will  perceive  after  a  careful 
reading  of  the  foregoing  extract : 


122  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

First — Are  Marlowe,  Peele,  and  Lodge  the  three  per- 
sons to  whom  Greene's  warning  is  addressed? 

Second — ^To  whom  of  the  two  persons  denounced  does 
the  word  "Shake-scene"  refer? 

Third— Who  were  the  two  persons  against  whom  the 
warning  was  directed? 

Let  it  be  accepted  that  the  warning  of  Greene  was 
directed,  as  Malone  and  his  followers  all  suggest  and  believe, 
and  as  all  dismterested  and  careful  readers  of  Greene's 
book  believe,  to  Marlowe,  Peele,  and  Lodge,  not  enemies, 
but  friends  of  Greene;  who  then  was  the  upstart  crow, 
beautified  with  the  feathers  of  Greene,  Marlowe,  Peele, 
and  Lodge,  with  his  tiger's  heart  wrapped  in  a  player's 
hide — the  man  who  had  assurance  enough  to  believe  that 
he  could  bombast  out  blank-verse  as  well  as  any  of  them, 
and  who  was  an  absolute  Johannes  Fac-totum,  and,  in  his 
own  conceit,  the  only  Shake-scene  in  a  country  ?  It  must 
have  been  one  of  the  two  persons  thus  described  and 
specified  by  Greene,  and  who  were  they? 

I  assert,  without  fear  of  successful  contradiction,  that 
Marlowe  could  not  have  been  one  of  them.  Greene  would 
not  have  warned  his  friend,  Christopher  Marlowe,  to 
beware  of  Christopher  Marlowe.  Such  a  warning  would 
have  been  absurd  and  ridiculous.  Can  any  intelligent 
reader  believe  that  Greene,  writing,  as  it  were,  a  death- 
bed warning  to  a  friend  and  brother  poet,  Marlowe,  against 
two  plagiarists  or  imitators,  would  stigmatize  the  warned 
Marlowe  himself  as  one  of  them  and  call  him  an  ape,  a 
bur,  a  puppet,  an  upstart  crow,  and  a  Johannes  Fac- 
totum? A  may  warn  B  against  his  friend  C,  or  his  enemy 
D;  but  A,  while  having  a  sound  mind  in  a  sound  body, 
would  never  and  could  never  warn  B,  his  friend,  against 


SHAKSPER    NOT    SHAKESCENE.  123 

B    himself,  and  load  his  warning  with  abusive  epithets 
expressly  directed  at  B. 

William  Shaksper  could  not  have  been  one  of  them, 
unless  there  is  some  proof  introduced  to  identify  Shaksper 
as  Shake-scene.  That  expression  might  refer  to  any 
player  who  was  also  a  poet.  It  is  of  itself  a  mere  epithet. 
Malone  seized  upon  that  word  as  referring  to  William 
Shaksper,  and  he  might  as  well  have  taken  the  character 
of  Mr.  Shakestone  in  Heywood  and  Brome's  play  of  the 
Witches  of  Lancashire  and  asserted  that  William  Shaksper 
was  thereby  meant.  It  was  a  mere  guess  on  the  part  of 
Malone,  and  an  absurd  one  at  that.  Malone  and  the 
commentators  say  that  here  is  a  notice  of  Shaksper,  not 
indeed  by  name,  but  with  such  a  near  approach  to  it  that 
nobody  can  entertain  a  moment's  doubt  that  he  was 
intended.  So  Collier  boldly  asserts,  and  so  do  all  the 
Shaksper  worshipers.  To  bolster  this  up,  they  say  that 
he  was  an  actor,  a  writer  of  original  plays,  and  that  no 
doubt  he  contributed  prologues  or  epilogues  and  inserted 
scenes,  speeches,  or  passages  for  any  temporary  emer- 
gency. And  Collier  says,  without  the  slightest  authority 
for  the  statement,  that  he  possessed  such  variety  of  talent 
that,  for  the  purposes  of  the  company  of  which  he  was  a 
member,  he  could  do  anything  that  he  might  be  called 
upon  to  perform.  Let  those  who  think  with  Collier  pro- 
duce, if  they  can,  any  prologue  or  epilogue,  scene,  speech, 
or  passage  which  Shaksper  produced  on  any  tem- 
porary emergency.  When  and  where  did  he  act  as 
a  Johannes  Factotum  of  any  association,  and  if  he 
did,  of  what  association?  When  and  where  did  Shak- 
sper give  evidence  that  he  had  the  fierceness  and  cru- 
elty of  a  tiger? 


124  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

There  is  not  to  be  found  anywhere  the  sHghtest  scrap 
of  evidence  showing  that  WilHam  Shaksper  was  a  copyist 
from  any  writings  of  Greene,  Marlowe,  Peele,  or  Lodge, 
or  from  the  writings  of  any  one  else.  There  is  no  evidence 
that  he  was  a  plagiarist  or  a  Jack-of-all-trades,  or  that 
he  could  write  blank  verse  or  any  other  kind  of  verse,  or 
that  he  could  write  anything  at  all,  other  than  his  name. 
There  is  nothing  to  show  that  Shaksper  was  cruel  or 
vindictive  at  any  time  before  1593  or  even  afterward. 

The  men  who  were  the  objects  of  Greene's  wrath  may  be 
sufficiently  identified  by  Chettle's  description  of  them ;  and 
students  of  the  Elizabethan  drama  will  find,  upon  exami- 
nation, that  my  opinion  as  to  the  two  men  is  the  correct 
view.  One  of  them  was  either  Thomas  Dekker  or  Anthony 
Monday.  Thomas  Dekker  would  only  partly  suit  the 
description  given  by  Greene,  and  I  am  strongly  of  opinion 
that  Anthony  Monday  was  the  offender.  Thomas  Dekker 
was  a  Johannes  Factotum  or,  as  we  commonly  put  it, 
"a  Jack-of-all-trades."  He  was,  or  had  been,  a  draper. 
He  was  a  player  and  a  playwriter,  and  he  was  especially 
used  by  Henslowe,  who  was  the  tyrant  over  playwriters 
and  players,  as  a  dresser  of  plays.  He  supplied  pro- 
logues and  epilogues  at  the  dictation  of  Henslowe.  I  am 
inclined  to  the  opinion,  from  the  perusal  of  plays  of  which 
he  was  the  sole  author,  as  well  as  his  prose  writings,  that 
he  had  acquired  a  knowledge  of  law,  for  he  was  fond  of 
using  law  terms,  and  he  used  them  accurately.  Read, 
for  example,  his  description  of  term  time  in  the  lower 
regions : 

"Here,   they  stand   upon   no   demurrers.     No  Audita 

querela  can  here  be  gotten,  no  writs  of  error  to  reverse 

.  judgment.     Here  is  no  applying  to  a  court  of  chancery 


SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESCENE.  125 

for  relief,  yet  every  one  that  comes  hither  is  served  with  a 
subpoena.  No,  they  deal  altogether  in  this  court  upon 
the  habeas  corpus,  upon  the  capias,  upon  the  ne  exeat 
regnum,  upon  rebellion,  upon  heavy  fines,  (but  no  recov- 
eries) upon  writs  of  outlawry  to  attach  the  body  forever, 
and  last  of  all  upon  execution  after  judgment,  which 
being  served  upon  a  man  is  his  everlasting  undoing." 

In  the  Gulls'  Horn-Book,  he  says,  "  If  they  choose  to 
discourse,  it  is  of  nothing  but  statutes,  bonds,  recogni- 
zances, fines,  recoveries,  audits,  rents,  subsidies,  sureties, 
enclosures,  liveries,  indictments,  outlawries,  feoffments, 
judgments,  commissions,  bankrupts,  amendments." 

Dekker  availed  himself  of  every  tale,  story,  or  incident 
that  he  could  quickly  weave  into  a  play;  and  Henslowe's 
Diary  shows  that  whenever  any  patching  of  a  play  had  to 
be  done,  no  matter  who  wrote  it,  Dekker's  services  were 
called  into  requisition  for  that  purpose.  He  wrote  addi- 
tions to  Faustus.  He  wrote  a  prologue  for  Tamerlaine. 
He  revised  and  added  to  Jeronimo,  and,  as  will  be  here- 
after shown,  he  was  the  author  in  part  and  in  whole  of 
more  than  forty  plays.  All  that  Collier  merely  guesses 
as  to  Shaksper  applies  truthfully  to  Dekker  except  as  to 
the  tiger's  heart.  He  was  the  man  whom  Ben  Jonson 
satirized  as  a  poet  ape,  and  as  a  plagiarist  and  dresser  of 
plays. 

As  early  as  1789,  Dr.  Farmer,  who  wrote  an  essay  on 
the  learning  of  Shakespeare,  says,  on  page  75:  "Shake- 
speare most  certainly  went  to  London,  and  conmienced 
Actor  thro'  necessity,  not  natural  inclination.  Nor  have 
we  any  reason  to  suppose  that  he  did  act  exceedingly 
well.  Rowe  tells  us,  from  the  information  of  Betterton, 
who  was  inquisitive  into  this  point,  and  had  very  early 


126  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

opportunities  of  inquiry  from  Sir  W.  Davenant,  that  he 
was  no  extraordinary  actor;  and  that  the  top  of  his  per- 
formance was  the  Ghost  in  his  own  Hamlet." 

Here  are  Rowe's  exact  words  copied  from  Colher's 
note  to  Chapter  6  of  his  "Life  of  Shaksper":  "His  name 
is  printed,  as  the  custom  was  in  those  times,  amongst 
those  of  the  other  players  before  some  old  plays,  but 
without  any  particular  account  of  what  sort  of  parts  he 
used  to  play;  and  though  I  have  inquired,  I  could  never 
meet  with  any  further  account  of  him  this  way  than  that 
the  top  of  his  performance  was  the  Ghost  in  his  own 
Hamlet."  A  man  could  not  be  a  very  extraordinary 
actor  who  only  took  the  part  of  the  Ghost  in  the  play  of 
Hamlet,  or,  as  Collier  hints,  that  of  old  Adam  in  "As 
You  Like  It." 

Shaksper  nowhere  appears  in  any  contemporary  writing, 
or  in  any  diary  of  the  time,  as  filling  the  part  of  a  Johannes 
Factotum,  while  Dekker  does. 

In  Chettle's  attempt  at  exculpation  and  apology,  he 
asserts  that  what  was  published  was  written  by  Greene 
and  that  he,  Chettle,  merely  copied  it  for  license  and 
printing  purposes,  because  it  was  badly  written,  and  he 
states  apologetically  that  he  left  a  part  out  but  added 
nothing.  He  further  adds  that  he  was  not  acquainted 
with  the  two  writers  who  took  ofTense,  and  with  one  of 
them  he  did  not  care  to  be  (evidently  referring  to  the  man 
with  the  tiger's  heart).  As  to  the  other,  he  might  have 
used  more  discretion  as  to  him,  since  Greene  was  dead 
and  especially  because  he  had  noticed  the  civil  demeanor 
and  excellent  qualities  of  the  writer,  and  besides  divers 
of  worship  (by  whom  he  means  men  of  rank  or  noblemen) 
have  reported  his  uprightness  of  dealing  and  his  facetious 


SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESCENE.  127 

grace  in  writing.  As  for  the  first  one  mentioned,  he, 
Chettle,  reverenced  his  learning,  and,  when  he  read  Greene's 
book,  struck  out  what  he  thought  Greene  had  in  some 
displeasure  written. 

Anthony  Monday,  instead  of  Thomas  Dekker,  I  feel 
quite  sure  was  the  man  ''with  the  tiger's  heart,"  to  whom 
Greene  alluded.  If  I  had  lived  in  that  era  and  had  had 
knowledge  of  him,  I  would  have  deemed  the  appellation 
of  "the  tiger's  heart"  as  a  very  appropriate  one  for  him. 
A  short  sketch  of  his  life  will  show  these  things 
— first,  that  he  was  a  player,  secondly,  that  he  was 
a  Johannes  Factotum,  and  thirdly,  that  he  had  a  tiger's 
heart. 

Monday  was  born  in  1553  and  died  in  1633.-  He  was 
intended  for  a  stationer,  and  was  apprenticed  to  John 
Aldee  to  learn  that  trade.  He  left  his  employer  and 
became  an  actor,  probably  a  strolling  player.  He  also 
wrote  plays.  He  went  to  Rome,  intending  or  pretending 
that  he  would  study  for  the  priesthood,  but  returned  to 
England,  and  in  1581  he  appeared  as  a  witness  against 
Campion  and  others  who  were  tried  under  the  laws  against 
Papists.  If  he  had  stopped  there  and  had  merely  given 
testimony,  his  conduct  might  have  been  excusable,  but 
he  carried  his  hatred  and  bigotry  so  far  that  when  Johnson, 
Richardson,  and  others  were  executed  on  May  30,  1582, 
upon  conviction  under  the  English  religious  acts,  he, 
Monday,  stood  at  the  foot  of  the  gallows  and  openly  dis- 
puted with  and  loudly  contradicted  the  poor  sufferers. 
Between  1580  and  1582,  he  became  one  of  the  Messengers 
of  her  Majesty's  Chamber,  and  he  wrote  pamphlets  and 
books  under  the  pseudonym  of  Lazarus  Piot.  Monday 
was  undoubtedly  a  great  and  skillful  writer  of  plays,  and 


128  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

I  am  satisfied  that  he  was  one  of  the  collaborators  in  the 
play  of  Julius  Caesar. 

Before  leaving  the  question  of  the  identity  of  the  man 
whom  Greene,  on  his  death-bed,  so  bitterly  assailed,  let 
us  again  briefly  but  carefully  consider  the  distinguishing 
traits  in  the  lives  of  the  three  men  to  whom  I  have  called 
the  reader's  attention.  Let  us  bear  in  mind  that  three 
characteristics  are  attributed  to  the  man  denounced  by 
Greene.  He  was  as  vindictive  and  cruel  as  a  tiger.  He 
was  a  player,  for  his  tiger's  heart  was  wrapped  in  a  player's 
hide,  and  he  was  a  Johannes  Factotum. 

Now,  since  the  warning  or  admonition  was  in  part 
addressed  to  Marlowe,  it  is  absurd  to  say  that  he  was 
warned  against  himself,  and  he  could  not  have  been  one 
of  the  tw^o  men  whom  Greene  so  severely  berated.  But 
even  if  the  warning  had  not  been  meant  for  him,  Marlowe 
was  never  a  Johannes  Factotum,  and  while  he  was  a 
libertine  and  an  atheist,  he  was  not  a  vindictive  and 
tiger-like  man. 

As  to  Dekker,  while  he  was  a  player  and  a  Johannes 
Factotum,  he  was  never  guilty  of  tigerish  conduct.  His 
dramatic  reply  to  the  Poetaster  of  Jonson  was  merely  a 
wit  combat,  with  nothing  vindictive  in  it,  and  it  took 
place  long  after  poor  Greene's  death. 

But  in  Anthony  Monday  all  the  three  characteristics 
were  combined.  He  was  a  player;  he  was  a  Johannes 
Factotum;  he  had,  as  I  have  shown  and  as  history  shows, 
a  tiger's  heart  wrapped  in  a  player's  hide.  The  following 
is  an  account  of  him  taken  from  the  Biographia  Dramatica, 
1782: 

"This  author  is  celebrated  by  Meres  amongst  the 
comic  poets  as  the  best  plotter;  but  none  of  his  dramatic 


SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESCENE.  129 

pieces  have  come  down  to  the  present  time.  He  appears 
to  have  been  a  writer  through  a  long  period,  there  being 
works  existing  pubhshed  by  him  which  are  dated  in  1580 
and  1621  and  probably  both  later  and  earlier  than  those 
years.  In  the  year  1582  he  detected  the  treasonable 
practices  of  Edward  Campion  and  his  confederates,  of 
which  he  published  an  account,  wherein  he  is  styled 
'sometime  the  pope's  scholar  allowed  in  the  seminary  at 
Rome.'  The  publication  of  this  pamphlet  brought  upon 
him  the  vengeance  of  his  opponents,  one  of  whom,  in  an 
answer  to  him,  has  given  his  history  in  these  words: 

"  '  Monday  was  first  a  stage  player,  after  an  apprentice, 
which  time  he  well  served  with  deceiving  of  his  master, 
then  wandering  towards  Italy,  by  his  own  report,  became 
a  cozener  in  his  journey.  Coming  to  Rome  in  his  short 
abode  there,  was  charitably  received,  but  never  admitted 
in  the  Seminary.'" 

Returning  to  England,  he  again  became  a  player  and 
a  writer  of  plays.  This  description  accurately  fits  Greene's 
description  in  two  particulars;  and  as  to  the  third,  I  take 
it  that  a  man,  whether  Protestant,  Roman  Catholic,  Angli- 
can Catholic,  Greek  Catholic,  or  Religionist  of  any  church, 
who  would  stand  at  the  foot  of  the  gallow^s  when  men, 
doomed  to  death  for  adherence  to  their  creed,  were  about 
to  be  launched  into  eternity,  and  hurl  arguments  and 
anathemas  at  them,  was,  to  adopt  the  language  of  York 
to  Queen  Margaret,  "more  inhuman,  more  inexorable,  O, 
ten  times  more,  than  tigers  >  i'  Hyrcania."  As  all  this 
occurred  ten  years  before  Greene's  death,  Monday's  ante- 
cedents must  have  been  well  known  to  Greene. 

Now,  who  was  this  second  playwriter?  He  was  a 
man  of  civil  demeanor,  with  excellent  qualities  of  head 


130  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

and  heart,  a  man  well  spoken  of  by  the  nobility.  There 
was  but  one  writer  of  plays  at  that  time  to  whom  it  could 
refer,  and  that  writer  was  Michael  Drayton,  a  native  of 
Warwickshire.  His  reputation  as  a  play  writer  of  civil 
demeanor  with  excellent  qualities  was  well  established. 

Thus  in  1601,  in  the  Return  from  Parnassus,  the  famous 
Cambridge  play,  after  eulogizing  Spenser,  Ingenioso  reads 
the  name  of  Michael  Drayton,  and  Judicio  says : 

"  Drayton's  sweet  muse  is  like  a  sanguine  dj'^e 
Able  to  ravish  the  rash  gazer's  eye." 

And  then  Ingenioso  says:  '' However  he  wants  one  true 
note  of  a  poet  of  our  times,  and  that  is  that  he  can  not 
swagger  it  well  in  a  tavern  nor  domineer  in  a  hot  house." 
This  was  an  indirect  but  a  very  great  compliment  to  and 
recognition  of  Drayton's  civil  demeanor. 

As  to  Drayton's  facetious  grace  in  writing,  Henslowe's 
Diary  shows  that  with  Anthony  Monday  he  wrote  the 
following  plays:  "A  Comedy  for  the  Court,"  and  a  play 
called  "Mother  Red  Cap";  and  that  with  Monday  and 
others  he  wrote  ''Caesar's  Fall,"  "Owen  Tudor,"  "Rich- 
ard Coeur  de  Leon's  Funeral,"  "The  Rising  of  Cardinal 
Wolsey,"  and  "Sir  John  Oldcastle";  while  in  the  same 
diary  no  mention  whatever  is  made  of  Shaksper.  Drayton 
and  Dekker  collaborated  in  the  composition  of  many 
plays,  as  will  be  hereafter  shown.  As  to  the  opinion  held 
of  him  by  noblemen,  English  annals  show  that  he  was 
beloved  and  patronized  by  Sir  Henry  Goodere,  Sir  Walter 
Aston,  Sir  Anthony  Cook,  the  Countess  of  Bedford  and 
others  of  the  nobility.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  noth- 
ing to  show  in  any  record  of  the  times  that  William  Shak- 
sper was  either  well  or  ill  spoken  of  by  any  nobleman. 


SHAKSPER  NOT  SHAKESCENE.  131 

A  fine  eulogy  of  Drayton  is  pronounced  by  Meres: 
"As  Virgil  doth  imitate  Catullus  in  the  like  manner 
of  Ariadne  for  his  story  of  Queen  Dido,  so  Michael  Dray- 
ton doth  imitate  Ovid  in  his  England's  Heroical  Epistles. 

"As  Sophocles  was  called  the  bee  for  the  sweetness  of 
his  tongue,  so  Drayton  is  termed  the  golden-mouthed  for 
the  purity  and  preciousness  of  his  style  and  phrase. 

"As  Aulus  Flaccus  is  reported  among  writers  to  be  of 
an  honest  life  and  upright  conversation,  so  Michael  Dray- 
ton {quern  totius  honoris  causa  nomino)  among  scholars, 
soldiers,  poets,  and  all  sorts  of  people,  is  held  for  a  man  of 
virtuous  disposition,  honest  conversation,  and  well  gov- 
erned carriage,  which  is  almost  miraculous  among  good 
wits  in  these  declining  times,  when  there  is  nothing  but 
roguery  in  villainous  man,  and  when  cheating  and  crafti- 
ness is  counted  the  clearest  wit  and  soundest  wisdom." 

The  theory  of  the  Shaksperites  is  that  the  Groat's-worth 
of  Wit  is  addressed  among  others  to  ]\larlowe,  and  if  it 
was,  it  is  certain  that  their  theory  that  he,  Marlowe, 
could  have  been  the  one  of  the  playwriters  who  was 
called  by  Greene  an  apish  imitator,  is  entirely  wrong. 
He  could  hardly  have  been  an  imitator  of  himself,  and 
why  should  Marlowe  be  warned  to  beware  of  Marlowe? 
All  this  really  absurd  theory  as  to  Shaksper  and  Marlowe 
is  merely  founded  upon  the  use  of  the  word  "Shake-scene" 
in  Greene's  Groat's-worth  of  Wit. 

If  now  a  careful  examination  should  satisfactorily  show 
to  the  literary  world  that  either  Monday,  Dekker,  or 
Drayton  was  the  author  of  part  or  all  of  Third  Henry  the 
Sixth,  in  which  the  words,  "0,  tiger's  heart  wrapped  in 
a  woman's  hide"  occur,  the  mystery  as  to  Greene's 
death-bed  diatribe  would  be  solved. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

LIES    FABRICATED    IX    AID    OF    THE    SHAKSPER    PRETENSION. 

'^  Lord,  Lord,  how  this  world  is  given  to  lying. ^' 

—First  Henry  IV,  v,  4. 

One  of  the  first  lies  coined  to  give  some  importance 
to  the  Shaksper  claim  is  the  very  silly  one  that  the  Earl 
of  Southampton  gave  one  thousand  pounds  to  Shaksper. 
This  lie  was  set  in  motion  long  after  Shaksper  died,  and 
was  an  invention  of  Davenant,  who  was  reputed  to  be  a 
bastard  son  of  Shaksper.  One  thousand  pounds  in  the 
time  of  Elizabeth  were  worth  as  much  as  S25,000  now  are. 
A  constant  repetition  of  this  lie  has  the  effect  to  make 
the  careless  reader  believe  in  its  truth.  Yet  there  is  no 
proof  whatever  to  support  the  statement.  Indeed  there 
is  no  evidence  that  Southampton  ever  knew  Shaksper. 
No  letter  of  Southampton  can  be  found  showing  even  an 
acquaintance  with  Shaksper  and  if  the  Earl  had  ever 
given  him  any  money  or  article  of  value,  some  e\'idence 
of  it  would  long  ago  have  been  produced. 

The  second  bold  lie  is  the  invention  of  Bernard  Lintot, 
who  got  out  an  edition  of  the  plays  in  1710.  He  said 
that  King  James  wrote  Shaksper  a  letter  with  his  own 
hand,  and  that  a  credible  person  then  living  (in  1710) 
who  saw  the  letter  in  Davenant's  possession,  told  him  so. 
But  Lintot  took  care  not  to  mention  the  name  of  the 
credible  person,  and  as  Appleton  Morgan  well  says,  "had 
Davenant  ever  possessed  such  a  letter,  Davenant  would 
have  taken  good  care  that  the  world  should  never  hear 


LIES  IX  AID  OF  SHAKSPER.  133 

the  last  of  it."  It  would  have  been  set  out  in  every 
biography  of  Shaksper  at  full  length. 

Another  lie  invented  to  give  a  reason  for  the  learning 
necessary  to  make  him  a  pla}"^Titer  is  that  Shaksper 
was  a  schoolmaster.  It  was  absolutely  necessary  to  give 
him  some  education  higher  than  that  which  the  few 
months  at  the  Stratford  grammar  school  could  have 
given  him,  so  it  is  broadly  asserted  without  the  slightest 
scintilla  of  evidence  to  support  the  assertion  that  he 
taught  school  in  his  native  county.  One  Beeston  told 
Aubrey  that  there  was  a  rumor  that  Shaksper  was  a 
schoolmaster,  and  so  Aubrey  gave  out  the  story  of  Beeston 
for  what  it  was  worth. 

Another  lie  has  been  added  to  the  list  of  lies  of  which 
Shaksper's  biography  is  made  up.  to  the  effect  that  Shak- 
sper was  a  clerk  in  a  law  office  and  a  law  student.  This 
lie  was  required  for  the  reason  that  in  some  of  the  plays 
legal  phrases  are  used  and  a  familiarity  with  law  terms 
is  occasionably  noticeable.  Of  course,  if  there  was  any 
evidence  whatever  to  be  adduced  on  this  point,  which 
would  be  worthy  of  the  least  consideration,  it  would  long 
ago  have  been  unearthed  and  quickly  heralded  to  the 
world. 

The  most  siUy,  stupid,  and  ridiculous  guess  of  all  the 
guesses  put  before  the  reading  public  to  make  out  a  plausi- 
ble claim  for  Shaksper  as  the  author  of  the  Sonnets,  is 
the  one  set  in  motion  by  Thomas  Tyler,  aided  by  the 
Reverend  W.  A.  Harrison.  This  Tyler  hypothesis,  stated 
succinctly,  is  that  Shaksper  had  a  liason  with  Mrs.  Mary 
Fitton,  one  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  maids  of  honor,  and  that 
she  was  the  black-eyed  woman  alluded  to  in  the  127th 
and  132d  sonnets.     For  the  purpose  of  fitting  Shaksper 


134  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

in  as  the  writer  of  the  sonnets,  the  reading  pubhc  is  asked 
to  beheve  that  ''the  gentle  Shaksper"  seduced  or  was 
seduced  by  Mrs.  Fitton,  and  that  he,  Shaksper,  the  seducer, 
put  the  whole  matter  in  print  in  a  very  delicate  way  in 
the  Shakespeare  Sonnets,  so  called,  for  all  after-genera- 
tions to  read.  Although  Tyler  and  Harrison  can  produce 
no  evidence  whatever  that  Shaksper  ever  knew  Mrs. 
Fitton,  this  horrible  story  is  suggested  by  them,  and  his 
character  is  blackened  and  hers  also  in  order  to  impress 
the  credulous  reader  with  the  belief  that  Shaksper  wrote 
sonnets  which  he  never  claimed  and  which,  as  I  shall 
show  in  a  subsequent  chapter,  he  did  not  write. 

The  most  harmless  lie  of  all,  but  one  which  neverthe- 
less is  a  lie,  is  the  assertion  generally  believed  that  Shak- 
sper was  married  to  Anne  Hathaway,  the  daughter  of 
Richard  Hathaway  of  Shottery.  While  this  lie  is  an 
unimportant  one,  yet  there  is  no  reason  why  it  should  not 
be  exposed  and  the  real  facts  given,  as  they  appear  of 
record. 

In  the  Episcopal  register  at  Worcester,  under  the  date 
of  November  27th,  1582,  appears  the  following  minute: 
"Item  eodem  die  similis  emanant  licencia  inter  Wilhelmum 
Shaxpere  et  Annam  Whateley  de  Temple  Grafton";  the 
licencia  being  one  of  matrimony,  as  shown  by  the  previous 
entry.  As  no  license  was  issued  on  the  next  day  and  as 
Shaksper  was  married  on  the  28th  day  of  November, 
1582,  upon  which  day  the  marriage  bond  is  dated,  it  is 
evident  that  a  mistake  was  made  as  to  the  bride's  name 
either  in  the  license  or  in  the  bond. 

But  there  was  no  child  of  Richard  Hathaway  of  Shot- 
tery by  the  name  of  Anne  Hathaway.  The  nearest 
resembling  Christian  name  of  any  of  his  children   was 


LIES   IN   AID   OF   SHAKSPER.  135 

Agnes  Hathaway,  and  the  Christian  name  given  both  in 
the  hcense  and  the  bond  is  Anne.  The  most  reasonable 
supposition  is  that  the  maiden  name  of  the  bride  was 
Anne  Whateley  and  that  she  was  the  widow  of  one  Hath- 
away and  Uving  at  Temple  Grafton  at  the  time  when  she 
was  married  to  William  Shaksper. 

As  Morgan  well  says  in  his  ''  Shakespeare,  in  Fact  and 
Criticism,"  "The  little  cottage  at  Shottery,  so  long  wor- 
shiped of  tourists  as  the  courting  ground  of  great  Shake- 
speare, may  have  to  go  into  the  limbo  of  exploded  myths. 
Richard  Hathaway  of  Shottery  (owner  of  the  cottage 
whose  glories  now  bid  fair  to  fade)  in  his  will,  dated  Sep- 
tember 1,  1581,  bequeathed  his  property  to  seven  children, 
among  other  provisions,  giving  six  pounds  thirteen  shillings 
to  his  daughter  Agnes,  and  as  no  Anne  was  mentioned 
(the  other  daughters  being  Catharine  and  Margaret) 
Agnes  has  invariably  been  supposed  a  clerical  error  for 
Anne.  But  Shakespeare  study  is  fast  being  guided  by 
modern  students  into  the  paths  of  common  sense,  and  the 
convenient  presumption  that  everything  not  accordant 
with  the  glib  biographer  of  the  greatest  Englishman  who 
ever  lived,  was  a  '  clerical  error '  is  about  to  be  pensioned 
off  forever." 

But  the  boldest  and  most  astounding  assertion  is  that 
William  Shaksper  wrote  plays  for  Henslowe. 

Phillips,  in  his  "Outlines,"  Volume  1,  page  109,  gives 
currency  to  this  huge  lie  by  asserting  the  following:  ''Thus 
it  appears  that  Shakespeare  up  to  this  period,  1594,  had 
written  all  his  dramas  for  Henslowe,  and  that  they  were 
acted  under  the  sanction  of  that  manager  by  the  various 
companies  performing  from  1592  to  1594  at  the  Rose 
Theatre  and  Newington  Butts." 


136  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Now  I  challenge  any  believer  in  Shaksper's  ability  to 
write  plays  to  show  that  Shaksper  is  mentioned  by  Hens- 
lowe  at  all.  If  he  had  been  able  to  write  a  play,  he  would 
have  been  hired  by  Henslowe,  and  the  bargain  and  the  pay 
would  have  been  recorded.  Or  if  he  had  been  a  dresser 
and  reviser  of  plays,  he  would  have  been  employed  and 
paid  for  that  work  by  Henslowe  and  the  fact  would  have 
been  noted.  The  Shaksperites,  finding  that  Titus  Andron- 
icus  had  been  put  upon  the  stage  in  that  year,  jump 
immediately  at  the  conclusion  that  Shaksper  wrote  it. 
And  that  is  the  sole  foundation  for  the  false  statement  that 
Shaksper  wrote  plays  for  Henslowe.  It  is  true  that  Col- 
lier, in  editing  Henslowe's  Diary,  has  seized  the  oppor- 
tunity of  inserting,  in  notes,  references  to  Shaksper,  so 
as  to  get  his  name  into  the  index  of  the  book.  Not  find- 
ing in  the  Diary  the  slightest  allusion  to  his  idol,  he  inserted 
in  notes  what  he  himself  believed  and  what  he  desired  the 
reader  to  believe. 

I  have  paid  no  attention  to  the  other  silly  lies  invented 
to  please  and  gratify  the  longings  of  the  people,  who  are 
naturally  anxious  to  read  or  hear  something,  whether 
true  or  false,  about  a  person  believed  to  be  a  great  writer. 
Among  such  is  the  invention  of  the  glove  stor3^  Queen 
Elizabeth,  they  say,  dropped  a  glove  while  crossing  the 
street,  and  the  courtly  Shaksper  picked  it  up  and  handed 
it  to  her,  while  making  at  the  same  time  a  felicitous 
impromptu  speech  in  praise  of  the  beauty  and  talents 
of  the  Virgin  Queen.  And  another,  the  silliest  of  all 
inventions,  is  the  contribution  of  John  Jordan  and 
others  to  the  catalogue  of  Shakespearean  poetry,  which 
catalogue  contains  among  other  choice  selections  the 
following : 


lies  in  aid  of  shaksper.  137 

David  and  Goliath. 

''Goliath  comes  with  sword  and  spear 
And  David  with  a  shng; 
Although  Goliath  rage  and  swear, 
Down  David  doth  him  bring." 

The  best  commentary  upon  all  these  fabrications  is 
uttered  by  Prince  Henry  in  1  Henry  IV,  ii,  4:  ''These 
lies  are  like  the  father  that  begets  them,  gross  as  a  moun- 
tain, open,  palpable." 

If  the  reader  will  ask  the  writers  who  give  currency  in 
their  biographies  of  William  Shaksper  to  the  foregoing 
lies  for  the  authority  for  their  statements,  he  will  find 
that  they  can  present  no  satisfactory  evidence  in  justi- 
fication of  their  assertions.  Can  any  one  produce  a  letter 
or  note  from  the  Earl  of  Southampton  to  Shaksper  evi- 
dencing the  gift?  or  can  a  copy  thereof  be  produced? 
Can  any  receipt  or  memorandum  be  found  penned  by  or 
for  Shaksper,  acknowledging  the  receipt  of  so  large  a  sum 
of  money?  Is  there  a  record  of  such  a  transaction  any 
where? 

The  same  question  might  be  asked  as  to  the  letter 
which  it  is  pretended  that  King  James  wrote  to  Shaksper. 
Such  a  letter  or  a  copy  of  it,  if  produced  and  authenti- 
cated, would  put  an  end  to  all  controversy,  if  it  acknowl- 
edged directly  or  indirectly  Shaksper's  ability  as  a  writer. 
Whatever  faults  King  James  had,  he  could  not  be  accused 
of  a  want  either  of  learning  or  discernment  as  to  scholar- 
ship. If  King  James  knew  Shaksper,  some  evidence  of 
that  knowledge  would  long  ago  have  been  unearthed. 

The  reader  might  also  ask  when  and  where  did  Shaksper 
teach  school?     Who  were  his  pupils?    What  evidence  can 


138  THE    SH-YKESPEARE    TITLE. 

be  produced  that  he  ever  taught  a  school,  either  in  War- 
wickshire or  any  where  else? 

And  if  he  was  a  lawyer's  clerk,  and  a  valued  assistant 
to  law^'ers  in  Stratford  or  any  where  else  in  the  prepara- 
tion of  their  cases,  how  and  when  and  by  what  reliable 
authority  were  the  fact-s  as  to  his  clerkship  and  valuable 
ser"vices  ascertained?  It  is  only  necessar}'  for  the  reader 
to  refer  to  the  ''Outlines"  of  Halliweh-Phillips  to  discover 
that  there  is  no  warrant  for  the  Btory  that  he  was  a  school- 
master or  a  lawyer's  clerk. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

the";conjectures   axd   guesses  which   make   up   the 

shaksper  biography. 

"Thou  hast  damnable  iteration." 

—First  Henry  XV,  i.  2. 

I  will  ask  the  student  reader  to  go  over  this  chapter 
carefully,  not  because  it  will  interest  or  please,  but  for  the 
reason  that  it  discloses  how  the  life  of  an  ignorant  man 
has  been  manufactured  or  transformed  into  that  of  an 
intellectual,  talented,  and  learned  poet,  by  means  of 
conjecture  and  bold  assertion,  based,  as  one  of  the  manu- 
facturers has  to  admit,  not  upon  what  was  or  is  really 
known  about  the  man,  but  upon  the  poetry  which  is  cir- 
culated under  a  name  somewhat  like  his. 

It  is  very  natural  that  the  believers  in  the  Shaksper 
claim  to  authorship  should  resort  to  the  plays  and  poems 
to  obtain  material  for  their  biographies  of  the  man.  His 
real  life  facts  are  so  meager,  so  inappropriate,  so  disappoint- 
ing, that  they  are  compelled  to  formulate  biographies  of 
their  idol  based  entirely  on  conjecture.  A  Shaksper  biog- 
rapher reasons  thus:  "Since  nothing,  absolutely  nothing, 
of  the  slightest  importance  is  known  of  the  man  called 
William  Shaksper  or  Shakespeare,  the  reputed  author  of 
the  Shakespeare  plays  and  poems,  except  through  the 
plays  and  poems  themselves,  I  will  manufacture  a  life  of 
the  man,  that  is,  of  such  a  man  as  the  writer  of  the  plays 
doubtless  was.  I  will  make  him  a  schoolmaster.  I  will 
make  him  a  la-«wer"s  clerk  and  accurate  adviser  of  all  the 
lawvers  in  and   about    Stratford-on-Avon.     I    will   make 


140  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

him  a  gentle,  courteous,  able,  and  refined  scholar.  I  will 
make  hmi  the  petted  companion  of  noblemen  and  the 
favorite,  not  only  of  the  Mrgin  Queen,  but  also  of  the 
scholarly  James.  I  will  make  him  a  traveler  and  sojourner 
in  foreign  lands,  and  a  master  of  modern  as  well  as  of 
ancient  languages.  I  will  make  him  the  patron  and  helper 
of  3^oung  and  aspiring,  but  inexperienced,  poets.  I  will 
make  him  so  alluring,  mentally  and  physically,  that  such 
manufactured  charms  and  gifts  will  account  for  his  being 
not  only  courted,  but  even  seduced,  by  a  maid  of  honor 
of  the  high  and  mighty  Elizabeth.  And  in  order  to  shut 
off  the  criticisms  of  doubters  and  unbelievers,  I  will  make 
him  so  intellectually  tall,  so  much  higher  and  greater  than 
other  literary  men,  that  he  wUl  appear  to  the  world  as 
utterly  indifferent  to  praise  or  censure.  I  will  exalt  him 
above  all  writers  of  every  age  and  clime,  not  by  the  power 
of  fact,  but  by  means  of  conjecture  and  invention.  All 
that  I  write  in  this  vein  will  captivate  and  suit  the  popu- 
lar taste.     Populus  vult  decipi  et  deciyiatur." 

The  biographies  of  Shaksper,  therefore,  are  not  made 
up  of  real,  actual  facts,  but  of  guesses,  conjectures,  and 
possibilities.  They  are  mainly  works  of  the  imagination, 
more  or  less  adorned  and  beautified  according  to  the  ability 
and  talents  of  the  composer  of  the  biography. 

I  will  commence  with  Collier,  and  I  will  merely  give 
in  this  chapter  a  few  of  such  phrases  as  are  constantly 
employed  by  him  and  the  other  writers  of  Shaksper's 
biography  to  make  up  a  life  of  Shaksper.  What  he  de- 
sires the  indulgent  public  to  believe  as  fact,  he  puts  in  his 
biography  in  the  conjectural  form,  thus:  ''It  has  been 
supposed  that.  Little  doubt  can  be  entertained  that. 
It  was  probably.     It  has  generally  been  stated  and  be- 


CONJECTURES    AND    GUESSES.  141 

lieved.  We  can  not  help  thinking  that.  It  is,  we  appre- 
hend. Malone  conjectures  that.  It  is  highly  probable 
that.  We  decidedly  concur  with  Malone  in  thinking 
that.  We  doubt  if.  We  may  presume  that.  Consid- 
ering all  the  circumstances,  there  might  be  good  reason. 
We  may  take  it  for  granted  that.  It  has  been  al- 
leged that.  We  therefore  apprehend  that.  It  is  very 
possible,  /therefore.  It  has  been  matter  of  speculation 
that.  We  have  additional  reasons  for  thinking  that. 
We  can  have  no  hesitation  in  believing  that.  We  also 
consider  it  more  than  probable  that.  There  is  some 
little  ground  for  thinking  that.  If  the  evidence  upon 
this  point  were  even  more  scanty,  we  should  be  convinced 
that.  It  was  at  this  juncture  probably,  if  indeed  he 
were  ever  in  that  country,  that  Shaksper  visited  Italy. 
We  have  already  stated  our  deliberate  and  distinct  opinion 
that.  It  must  have  been  about  this  period  that.  We 
may  be  sure  that.  We  have  concluded,  as  we  think  we 
may  do  very  fairly,  that.  Another  reason  for  thinking 
that,  etc.,  is  that.  We  may  feel  assured  that.  As  far  as 
we  can  judge,  there  is  good  reason  for  believing  that.  It 
is  our  opinion  that.  It  is  our  conviction  that.  We  appre- 
hend likewise  that.  It  is  not  at  all  improbable  that.  Our 
chief  reason  for  thinking  it  unlikely  that.  We  may 
suppose  that.  We  may  assume,  perhaps,  in  the  absence 
of  any  direct  testimony  that.  It  is  highly  probable 
that.  We  suppose  Shakespeare  to  have  ceased  to  act  in 
the  summer  of  1604.  There  is  no  doubt  that.  There 
is  reason  for  believing  that.  It  is  possible,  as  we 
have  said,  that.  Such  may  have  been  the  nature  of 
the  transaction.  We  can  only  conjecture.  Nevertheless, 
although     we    suppose     him.     It     is  very    likely     that. 


142  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

We  hardly  need  entertain  a  doubt  that,"  and  so  on  usque 
ad  nauseam. 

It  is  by  such  conjectural  phrases  as  the  above  that 
Collier  makes  up  the  life  of  William  Shaksper,  and  he  makes 
the  following  candid  confession  in  the  last  paragraph  of 
the  concluding  chapter  "If  the  details  of  his  life  be  im- 
perfect, the  history  of  his  mind  is  complete;  and  we  leave 
the  reader  to  turn  from  the  contemplation  of  the  man 
Shakespeare  to  the  study  of  the  poet  Shakespeare." 

Halliwell-Phillips  is  more  modest  in  his  guesses  and 
conjectures.  He  entitles  his  two  large  volumes  "The 
Outlines  of  the  Life  of  Shakespeare,"  and  he  has  the  can- 
dor to  say,  "I  have  no  favorite  theories  to  advocate,  no 
wild  conjectures  to  drag  into  a  temporary  existence,  and 
no  bias,  save  one  inspired  by  the  hope  that  Shakespearean 
discussions  may  be  controlled  by  submission  to  the  author- 
ity of  practical  evidences."  And  he  further  adds  that, 
"  it  will  thus  be  seen  that  no  matter  what  pains  a  biographer 
may  take  to  furnish  his  store,  the  result  will  not  present  a 
more  brilliant  appearance  than  did  the  needy  shop  of 
Romeo's  Apothecary,"  He  then  forgets  his  resolution 
not  to  conjecture,  and  proceeds  to  conjecture  as  follows: 
"It  must  have  been  somewhere  about  this  period,  1568, 
that  Shakespeare  entered  into  the  mysteries  of  the  horn- 
book and  the  A,  B,  C."  (Vol.  1,  page  40.)  Again,  on  page 
46,  he  says,  "  that  Shakespeare  in  his  early  youth  witnessed 
representations  of  some  of  these  mysteries,  can  not  admit 
of  reasonable  doubt."  On  page  53,  he  says:  "Although 
there  is  no  certain  information  on  the  subject,  it  may  per- 
haps be  assumed  that.  The  best  authorities  unite  in 
telling  us  that."  On  page  58,  he  says:  "There  can  be  no 
hesitation  in  concluding  that." 


CONJECTURES   AND   GUESSES.  143 

I  will  now  take  up  his  conjectural  phrases  and  give  a 
few  instances:  "There  are  reasons  for  believing  that.  It 
is,  however,  all  but  certain  that.  It  may  be  gathered 
from,  etc.,  that.  It  is  most  likely,  indeed,  all  but  certain 
that.  There  is  an  old  tradition  which  avers  that  there  is 
every  probability  that.  It  may  then  fairly  be  said  that. 
It  is  far  more  likely  that.  That  the  poet  was  intimately 
acquainted,  etc.,  may  be  fairly  assumed.  It  is  all  but 
impossible  that.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that.  It  was 
the  general  belief  that.  It  is  not  unlikely  that.  It  is  not 
likely  that." 

Sidney  Lee  has  to  resort  also  to  the  same  guessing  sys- 
tem in  his  life  of  Shakespeare.  Here  are  a  few  samples: 
''It  was  doubtless  with.  It  is  possible  that.  There  is  a 
likelihood  too  that.  We  may  assume  that.  It  is  unlikely 
that.  It  is  therefore  probable  that.  In  all  probability. 
It  was  probably.  It  is  fair  to  infer.  There  is  every  indi- 
cation that." 

How  Shaksper  indulged  in  foreign  travel  is  very  cleverly 
attempted  to  be  proved  by  the  biographer's  own.  experi- 
ence. I  quote  from  "William  Shakespeare  Portrayed  by 
Himself,"  or  a  revelation  of  the  poet  written  by  Robert 
Waters,  at  page  222:  "Considering,  therefore,  how  little 
we  know  of  the  life  of  the  poet,  and  how  much  he  knew 
of  the  world,  what  scenes  may  he  not  have  witnessed, 
what  people  may  he  not  have  seen,  and  what  subjects 
may  he  not  have  studied,  that  we  wot  not  of!  His  friend, 
the  Earl  of  Southampton,  was  captain  of  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal ships  in  the  expedition  against  Spain  in  1597,  and 
afterwards  had  the  command  of  a  squadron  under  Essex. 
May  not  the  poet  have  accompanied  him  on  one  of  his 
voyages?     His  knowledge  of  the  continent  is  too  marvel- 


144  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

ously  exact  to  have  been  learned  at  second  hand.  Take, 
for  mstance,  the  Prince's,  or  rather  King  Henry's,  descrip- 
tion of  French  ground.  The  first  thing  that  strikes  one 
on  making  a  journey  from  England  to  France  is  the  differ- 
ence in  the  general  aspect  of  French  soil,  which  looks  dull 
and  dark  as  compared  with  that  of  England.  Now  mark 
how  King  Henry  describes  it: 

'  If  we  be  hindered 
We  shall  your  tawny  ground  with  your  red  blood 
Discolor.' 

"I  have  been  in  France,  and  I  know  of  no  word  that 
describes  its  soil  so  exact  as  this.  Now  which  is  more 
probable,  that  the  poet's  knowledge  came  from  reading 
traveler's  books,  or  that  it  came  from  actual  observation? 
So  sure  as  Prince  Henry  had  seen  France  with  his  own 
eyes,  so  sure  had  Shakespeare." 

Mr.  Waters'  question  can  be  very  easily  answered. 
There  is  no  probability  to  be  worried  over  at  all.  Now 
mark,  Mr.  Waters,  to  quote  Prince  Henry's  own  words, 
''How  plain  a  tale  shall  put  you  down." 

The  fact  recited  below  shows  how  worthless  "  may  not's  " 
and  "may  have  been's"  actually  are.  If  Mr.  Robert 
Waters  will  procure  Appleton  Morgan's  "Study  of  the  War- 
wickshire Dialect"  and  turn  to  page  460  of  that  carefully 
written  work,  he  will  discover  that  the  writer  of  the  play 
hastily  borrowed  from  Holinshed.  He  will  there  read 
the  following : 

"A  great  part  of  'Henry  VIII'  substantially  consists 
of  centos  from  Holinshed,  and  the  dramatist  often  re- 
produces the  speeches  given  by  the  historian.  Thus 
Holinshed  says  that  Henry  answers  the  defiance  of  Mount- 


CONJECTURES    AND    GUESSES.  145 

joy,  the  herald:  'I  wish  not  anie  of  you  so  unadvised  as 
to  be  the  occasion  that  I  dye  your  tawnie  ground  with 
your  red  blood.'  Shakespeare  merely  reduces  this  to 
rhythm,  thus: 

*  If  we  be  hindered 
We  shall  your  tawny  ground  with  your  red  blood 
Discolor.' 

''Still  more  curious  is  the  following :  Holinshed  remarks 
in  his  history  of  Richard  III,  'Before  such  great  things, 
men's  hearts  of  a  secret  instinct  of  nature  misgive  them, 
as  the  sea,  without  wind,  swelleth  himself  before  a  tem- 
pest.' Shakespeare  saw  the  appositeness  of  the  simile 
and  paraphrased  it: 

'  By  a  divine  instinct  men's  minds  distrust 
Pursuing  danger — as  by  proof  we  see 
The  water  swell  before  a  boisterous  storm.'  " 

Another  writer,  Fleay,  goes  beyond  the  others  and 
boldly  uses  the  phrase,  "I  conjecture  that,"  to  make  his 
biography  acceptable  and  palatable  to  the  unsuspecting 
reader. 

Such  are  the  guesses  and  conjectural  phrases  that  are 
used  by  the  Shaksper  biographers  to  make  an  impression 
on  the  reading  public  as  to  the  ability  of  Shaksper  to  write 
plays  and  poems,  and  they  do  make  an  impression  on  the 
careless  or  ignorant  readers.  \Miere  the  facts  do  not  fit, 
some  excuse  is  found  to  bury  the  fact,  and  where  there 
are  no  facts,  invention  is  used  to  make  a  learned  man  out 
of  one  whose  handwriting  shows  that  he  was  too  ignorant 
to  write  his  own  name  correctly. 


146  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

After  reading  the  made-up  and  padded  biographies, 
pahiied  off  upon  the  innocent  and  gulhble  pubhc  as  true 
hves  of  Shakespeare,  the  sensible  reader  feels  like  exclaim- 
ing with  Coleridge,  "In  spite  of  aU  the  biographies,  ask 
your  owTi  hearts — ask  your  own  common  sense — to  conceive 
the  possibility  of  this  man  being  .  .  .  the  anomalous,  the  wild, 
the  irregular  genius  of  our  daily  criticism.  AMiat!  Are  we 
to  have  miracles  in  sport?  Or  (I  speak  reverently)  does 
God  choose  idiots  by  whom  to  convey  divine  truths  to  man?" 

Or  if  still  imbued  with  Shaksper  idolatr)^,  he  can  at 
least  say  with  Hallam,  when  he  alluded  to  the  fact  that 
all  that  the  eonmientators  told  him  of  the  man  Shake- 
speare pictured  him  as  anything  but  the  master  he  was 
represented  to  be,  '*If  there  was  a  Shakespeare  of  earth, 
as  I  suspect,  there  was  also  one  of  heaven,  and  it  is  of  him 
we  desire  to  learn  more." 

It  will  enable  the  reader  to  partly  verify  what  I  have 
asserted  by  making  brief  citations  from  the  most  noted 
biographers  of  Shaksper.  And  first,  here  is  one  from 
Rolfe's  "Shakespeare,  the  Boy,"  at  page  118: 

"How  long  William  remained  in  the  grammar  school 
we  do  not  know,  but  probably  not  more  than  six  years,  or 
until  he  was  thirteen.  In  1577,  his  father  was  beginning 
to  have  bad  luck  in  his  business,  and  the  boy  very  likely  had 
to  be  taken  from  school  for  work  of  some  sort.  As  Ben 
Jonson  said,  'Shakespeare  had  small  Latin  and  less  Greek' 
— perhaps  none — and  this  was  probably  due  to  his  leaving 
the  grammar  school  before  the  average  age.  However 
that  may  have  been,  we  may  be  pretty  sure  that  all  the 
regular  schooling  he  ever  had  was  got  there." 

The  next  two  citations  are  samples  from  Lee's  "Life  of 
Shakespeare."     The  first  one  is  from  page  79:  "There  is 


CONJECTURES  AND    GUESSES.  147 

a  likelihood  too  that  Spenser,  the  greatest  of  Shake- 
speare's poetic  contemporaries,  was  first  drawn  by  the 
poems  into  the  ranks  of  Shakespeare's  admirers.  It  is 
hardly  doubtful  that  Spenser  described  Shakespeare  in 
^ Colin  Clout's  Come  Home  Again'  (completed  in  1594) 
under  the  name  of  'Aetion.'"  The  second  one  is  copied 
from  page  271,  and  illustrates  the  fact  that  Ward's  testi- 
mony and  the  Bidford  tradition,  however  ancient  and 
venerable  they  really  were,  and  although  the  first  was  the 
testimony  of  a  preacher,  did  not  particularly  agree  with 
his  idea  of  what  the  real  Shakespeare  ought  to  be,  and  so 
he  repudiates  them  "as  unproven."  "According  to  the 
testimony  of  John  Ward,  the  vicar,  Shakespeare  enter- 
tained at  New  Place  his  two  friends,  Michael  Drayton  and 
Ben  Jonson,  in  this  same  spring  of  1616,  but  it  seems  drank 
too  hard,  for  Shakespeare  died  of  a  fever  there  contracted. 
A  popular  local  legend,  which  was  not  recorded  until  1762, 
credited  Shakespeare  with  engaging  at  an  earlier  date  in 
a  prolonged  and  violent  drinking  bout  at  Bidford,  a  neigh- 
boring village,  but  his  achievements  as  a  hard  drinker  may 
be  dismissed  as  unproven." 

I  will  give  one  more  citation  from  a  most  remarkable 
book,  called  "Shakespeare's  True  Life,"  by  James  Walters, 
at  page  160.  It  will  be  noticed  how,  for  the  purpose  of 
helping  his  pet  theory  that  Shaksper  was  a  lawyer's  clerk 
or  assistant,  he  chooses  to  differ  from  Rolfe  on  the  length 
of  time  of  the  grammar  school  tuition,  and  it  will  also  be 
noticed  how  cleverly  he  invents  the  facts  as  to  Shaksper's 
legal  education  and  training.  He  even  furnishes  us  with  a 
graphic  account  of  the  lawyers  who  stirred  up  strife  in 
Stratford,  and  takes  pains  to  place  Shaksper  as  clerical 
assistant  in  the  office  of  one  of  them.     So  litigious,  he  says, 


148  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

were  the  Stratfordians,  that  there  was  a  constant  demand 
by  the  whole  corps  of  lawyers  for  his  valuable  services  as 
a  connexion.  How  this  talented  biographer  gathered  all 
these  incidents  in  Shaksper's  early  life,  he  fails  to  explain. 
If  he  invented  them,  he  certainly  surpasses  all  the  others 
in  inventive  power,  and  that  is  saying  a  great  deal.  He 
says,  on  page  160:  "There  is  little  doubt  as  to  his  having 
left  the  grammar  school  at  an  age  we  in  these  days  deem 
very  early.  In  every  feature  of  the  matter,  the  balance 
of  evidence  favors  his  having  acted  as  clerk  assistant  in 
the  office  of  Walter  Roche,  his  earliest  instructor  in  the 
guild  school.  There  are  known  to  have  been  some  half 
dozen  attorneys  practicing  in  that  town  at  that  time;  one, 
in  particular,  acted  for  his  father  and  the  Hathaway 
family.  Six  lawyers  in  a  place  of  its  size  would  have  an 
active  time  in  setting  their  fellow  townsmen  by  the  ears 
sufficient  to  yield  a  living  for  the  whole  six,  and  it  is 
known  to  have  been  much  given  to  litigation  in  those 
days.  Either  of  the  number  commanding  his  services 
would  derive  no  small  advantage  from  what  then,  as  now, 
is  termed  'connexion.'  Apart  from  young  Will's  talent  in 
the  office,  we  may  rest  assured  that  whatever  he  under- 
took would  speedily  bear  the  impress  of  his  thought  and 
action,  and  it  is  but  reasonable  to  infer  that  a  lawyer  of 
clerical  antecedents  would  remunerate  him  for  services 
fairly,  according  to  his  ability  and  energy." 

It  is  evident  that  the  writer  is  not  too  tame.  He  would 
not  be  whipped  for  overdoing  Termagant  or  out-heroding 
Herod.  He  can  shoot  arrows  of  imagination  with  a  very 
long  bow.     His  padding  is  unrivaled. 

One  of  the  many  biographers,  Frederick  G.  Fleay, 
shows  in  his  introduction  that  he  is  very  much  ashamed  of 


CONJECTURES  AND    GUESSES.  149 

his  predecessors,  for  he  says:  "Previous  investigators 
have,  with  industrious  minuteness,  already  ascertained 
for  us  every  detail  that  can  reasonably  be  expected  of 
Shaksper's  private  life.  With  laborious  research  they 
have  raked  together  the  records  of  petty  debts,  of  parish 
assessments,  of  scandalous  tradition,  and  of  idle  gossip. 
I  do  not  think  that,  when  stripped  of  verbiage  and  what 
the  slang  of  the  day  calls  padding,  much  more  than  this 
can  be  claimed  as  the  result  of  the  voluminous  writings 
on  this  side  of  his  career." 

For  my  part,  I  wish  that,  for  the  sake  of  the  truth  of 
history,  these  searchers  after  facts  had  given  their  time 
to  as  industrious  a  search  for  the  real  author  or  authors 
of  the  poems  and  plays  as  they  gave  to  these  wretched, 
paltry  details,  which  disgust  the  readers  of  Shaksper 
biographies. 

One  of  the  most  amusing  facts  in  connection  with  the 
Shaksperite  idolaters  is  that  when  Ireland  perpetrated  his 
forgeries,  consisting  of  a  pretended  letter  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth to  Shaksper,  a  pretended  letter  of  Shaksper  to  the 
Earl  of  Southampton,  pretended  writings  of  Shaksper, 
and  part  of  a  pretended  letter  of  Southampton  to  Shak- 
sper, the  men  of  taste,  antiquarians  and  heralds,  who 
viewed  them  unanimously  testified  in  favor  of  their 
authenticity,  and  the  world  so  believed  until  Malone,  in 
his  "Inquiry,"  exposed  the  forgery. 

I  can  not  help  setting  out  from  Malone's  "Inquiry,"  page 
163,  for  the  amusement  of  the  reader,  one  stanza  of  the 
verses  pretended  by  Ireland  to  have  been  addressed  by 
Shaksper  to  his  mistress.  The  first  stanza  will  suffice  to 
show  the  reader  how  gullible  Shaksper  idolaters  have  been. 
I  will  not  say  "are  now." 


150  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

"  Is  there  in  heav-enne  aught  more  rare 
Than  thou  sweete  nymphe  of  Avon  fayre, 
Is  there  onne  earthe  a  manne  more  trewe 
Than  Willy  Shakespeare  is  toe  you." 

Webb,  in  his  "Mystery  of  Shakespeare,"  disposes  of  the 
conjectures  and  "might-have-been's"  of  the  eulogists  of 
Shaksper  when  he  says:  "The  world  is  not  made  up  of 
'might-have-been's,'  and  we  can  not  accept  probabilities 
as  facts,  and  we  have  not  a  particle  of  evidence  to  justify 
these  assumptions.  Still,  if  we  choose  to  indulge  our 
fancy,  and  to  endow  the  player  with  that  enormous  re- 
ceptivity with  which  he  is  endowed  by  Professor  Dowden, 
if  with  the  Professor  we  choose  to  compare  him  to  the 
Arctic  whale,  which  gulps  in  whole  shoals  of  acalephse 
and  molluscs,  we  may  account  for  that  vast  and  various 
amount  of  information  which  strikes  us  with  amazement 
in  the  later  works  of  Shakespeare." 


CHAPTER  XV. 

shaksper's  real  axd  traditio.val  life. 
"As  tedious  as  a  twice-told  tale." 

— King  John,  iii,  4. 

If  William  Shaksper  of  Stratford-upon-Avon  did  not 
write  the  plays  and  poems  now  attributed  to  him,  the  world 
at  large  would  care  very  little  about  him,  his  family  or 
his  life-history.  But  that  life-history,  where  it  does  not 
rest  on  vague  tradition  or  mere  hivention  but  upon  certain 
and  fixed  facts,  is  valuable  as  a  means  to  identify  the 
man  Shaksper. 

Rowe,  the  earhest  biographer,  says  that  he  was  the  son 
of  Mr.  John  Shaksper,  who  was  a  dealer  in  wool,  while 
Aubrey  says  that  his  father  was  a  butcher.  WilUam 
Shaksper  was  baptized  on  the  26th  day  of  April,  1564, 
the  baptismal  entry  on  the  register  bemg  as  follows: 

"  1564  April  26th,  Gulielmus  filius  Johannes  Shakspere." 

On  what  day,  month,  and  year  he  was  born,  no  record 
has  been  found,  and  hence  the  date  of  his  birth  can  not  be 
fixed.  Aubrey  says  that  when  he  was  a  boy  he  exercised 
his  father's  trade.  Rowe  says  that  "his  father  could  give 
him  no  better  education  than  his  own  employment,  and 
that  William  went  for  a  short  time  to  a  free  school.  He 
married  while  he  was  very  young  the  daughter  of  one 
Hathaway,  and  afterwards  falling  into  ill  company  he 
robbed  the  park  of  Sir  Thomas  Lucy  of  Charlecote  and  to 
escape  prosecution  ran  away  from  his  home  and  his  family 
to  London.     He  died  in  the  fifty-third  year  of  his  age,  and 


152  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

was  buried  on  the  north  side  of  the  chancel  in  the  great 
church  at  Stratford.  He  had  three  daughters,  two  of 
whom  lived  to  be  married;  Judith,  the  elder,  to  one  Mr. 
Thomas  Quiney  and  Susannah  to  Dr.  John  Hall."  This 
is  all  that  Rowe  says  he  "could  learn  of  any  note,  either 
relating  to  himself  or  his  family."  He  adds  that  "the 
character  of  the  man  is  best  seen  in  his  writings."  He 
could  have  added  that  Shaksper's  father  and  mother 
could  not  -ttTite  their  own  names;  that  Judith  Quiney,  his 
daughter,  could  not  write  her  name ;  that  Susannah  Hall 
was  illiterate,  and  that  William  Shaksper  could  hardly 
wTite  his  own  name. 

Rowe  produced  this  biography  in  the  year  1709. 
Afterward  the  Symmons  edition  of  the  plays  from  the 
text  of  Steevens  and  Malone  was  issued,  and  Sjmimons, 
the  editor  and  a  believer  in  Shaksper's  capacity  to  write 
the  plays,  appended  the  following  biography  of  the 
man: 

"Little  more  than  two  centuries  have  elapsed  since 
William  Shakespeare  conversed  with  our  tongue  and  trod 
the  selfsame  soil  with  ourselves,  and  if  it  were  not  for  the 
records  kept  by  our  church  in  its  register  of  births,  mar- 
riages, and  burials,  we  should  be  at  this  moment  as  per- 
sonally ignorant  of  '  the  sweet  swan  of  Avon '  as  we  are  of 
the  old  minstrel  and  rhapsodist  of  Meles.  That  William 
Shakespeare  was  born  in  Stratford-on-Avon ;  that  he  mar- 
ried and  had  three  children;  that  he  died  before  he  had 
attained  old  age,  and  was  buried  in  his  native  town,  are 
positively  the  only  facts  in  the  personal  history  of  this 
extraordinary  man  of  which  we  are  certainly  possessed. 

"To  fill  up  this  bare  and  most  unsatisfactory  outline, 
we  must  have  recourse  to  the  vague  reports  of  unsubstan- 


shaksper's  real  and  traditional  life.  153 

tial  tradition  or  to  the  still  more  shadowy  inferences  of 
lawless  and  vagabond  conjecture." 

We  know  now,  however,  that  Shaksper  traded  in  prop- 
erty; that  he  signed  his  name  to  a  deed  and  mortgage; 
that  Francis  Collins  prepared  a  will  for  him  which  he 
signed  in  three  different  places,  and  that  four  of  those 
signatures  are  preserved.  We  know  also  that  he  had 
petty  lawsuits  and  that  he  was  a  money-getter.  We  do 
not  know  that  he  died  from  the  effects  of  a  drunken 
debauch,  for  that  statement  rests  on  the  same  shadowy 
foundation  as  do  the  stories  about  his  dealings  with  the 
literati  and  their  sacred  majesties,  Elizabeth  and  James, 

Nothing  upholds  or  sustains  the  pretension  that  Shak- 
sper could  write  poetry  at  all  except  the  two  poetical 
effusions  of  Jonson  and  his  conversation  with  Drummond. 
Without  them,  the  world  would  have  no  faith  in  William 
Shaksper. 

One  of  the  Shaksper  biographers,  Fleay,  speaking  of 
the  various  Lives  published,  says  that  they  have  shown 
beyond  doubt  that  Shaksper  was  born  at  Stratford-on- 
Avon,  was  married,  had  three  children,  left  his  home, 
made  money,  returned  to  Stratford,  invested  his  savings 
there  and  died.  In  speaking  of  Phillips'  "Outlines  of 
Shaksper's  Life,"  he  says:  "This  book  is  a  treasure-house 
of  documents,  and  it  is  greatly  to  be  regretted  that  they 
are  not  published  by  themselves,  apart  from  hypotheses 
founded  on  idle  rumors  or  fallacious  misreasoning.  I  do 
not  know  of  any  work  so  full  of  fanciful  theories  and 
ignes  fatui,  likely  to  entice  a  deluded  traveler  out  of  the 
beaten  path  into  strange  quagmires.  There  is  much  else 
besides  documents  given  in  the  present  treatise, — dis- 
cussions as  to  who  might  have  been  Shakespeare's  school- 


154  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

master,  whether  he  was  apprenticed  to  a  butcher,  whether 
he  stole  a  deer  out  of  a  non-existent  park,  whether  he 
held  horses  at  the  theatre  door  or  was  employed  in  any- 
other  equine  capacity,  whether  he  went  to  Denmark  or 
Venice,  and  whether  Lord  Bacon  wrote  his  plays  for  him." 

The  facts  as  to  Shaksper's  litigious  spirit  are  brought 
out  very  prominently  by  Sidney  Lee  in  his  ''Life  of  Shak- 
sper,"  at  page  206,  through  an  enumeration  of  his  petty 
law^suits.  "Shakespeare,"  he  says,  " inherited  his  father's 
love  of  litigation  and  stood  vigorously  for  his  rights  in  all 
his  business  relations.  In  March,  1600,  he  recovered  in 
London  a  debt  of  7£  from  one  John  Clayton.  In  July, 
1604,  in  the  local  court  at  Stratford,  he  sued  one  Philip 
Rogers,  to  whom  he  had  supplied  since  the  preceding 
March  malt  to  the  value  of  1  £,  19s,  lOd,  and  had  on 
June  25th  lent  2s  in  cash.  Rogers  had  paid  back  6s, 
and  Shakespeare  sought  the  balance  of  the  account,  1  £, 
15s,  lOd.  During  1608  and  1609  he  was  at  law  with 
another  fellow  townsman,  John  Addenbroke."  He  recov- 
ered a  judgment  against  Addenbroke  on  February  15, 
1609,  for  6  £,  but  Addenbroke  left  the  town.  Lee  adds 
that  Shakespeare  avenged  himself  by  proceeding  against 
one  Thomas  Hornby,  who  had  acted  as  the  absconding 
debtor's  bail. 

In  commenting  upon  these  facts  in  Shaksper's  life- 
history,  the  late  Richard  Grant  White  gave  utterance  to 
the  following  words  of  lamentation,  in  which  I  am  sure 
the  most  ardent  worshiper  of  the  divine  William  will 
coincide : 

"These  stories  grate  upon  our  feelings.  The  pursuit 
of  an  impoverished  man  for  the  sake  of  imprisoning  him 
and  depriving  him,  both  of  the  power  of  paying  his  debt 


shaksper's  real  and  traditional  life.         155 

and  supporting  himself  and  his  family,  is  an  incident  in 
Shakespeare's  life  which  it  requires  the  utmost  allowance 
and  consideration  for  the  practice  of  the  time  and  country 
to  enable  us  to  contemplate  with  equanimity.  Satisfac- 
tion is  impossible.  The  biographer  of  Shakespeare  must 
record  these  facts,  because  the  literary  antiquaries  have 
unearthed  and  brought  them  forward  as  new  particulars 
of  the  life  of  Shakespeare.  We  hunger,  and  we  receive 
these  husks;  we  open  our  mouths  for  food,  and  we  break 
our  teeth  against  these  stones." 

Passing  from  his  real  life,  let  us  take  up  his  life  as 
tradition  gives  it.  So  much  of  the  life-history  of  William 
Shaksper  as  depends  upon  tradition  has  a  tendency  to 
show  that  he  could  not  have  written  the  plays  and  poems. 
The  educational  tradition  is  as  follows:  I  quote  from 
Row^e : 

"The  narrowness  of  his  father's  circumstances  and  the 
want  of  his  assistance  at  home  forced  his  father  to  with- 
draw him  from  thence  (the  Stratford  school)  and  unhap- 
pily prevented  his  farther  proficiency." 

If,  now,  we  rely  upon  this  statement,  the  presumption 
follows  that  William  Shaksper  was  an  uneducated  man. 
A  few  months  at  a  Stratford  grammar  school  could  not 
possibly  avail  to  educate  anybody,  however  naturally 
gifted.  Collier,  who  spares  no  effort  to  magnify  Shak- 
sper's abilities,  admits  that  we  are  destitute  of  all  evidence 
beyond  Rowe's  assertion.  He  says:  ''That  his  father  and 
mother  could  give  him  no  instruction  is  quite  certain 
from  the  proof  that  we  have  adduced  that  neither  of  them 
could  write,"  and  he  adds  further,  "As  we  are  ignorant 
of  the  time  when  he  went  to  school,  we  are  also  in  the 
dark  as  to  the  period  when  he  left  it.     Rowe  indeed  has 


156  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

told  US  that  the  poverty  of  John  Shakespeare  and  the 
necessity  of  employing  his  son  profitably  at  home  induced 
him  at  an  early  age  to  withdraw  him  from  the  place  of 
instruction."  The  presumption  of  Shaksper's  want  of 
education  is  further  strengthened  by  two  established 
facts — one  that  his  handwriting,  now  said  to  be  preserved 
in  the  British  Museum,  shows  that  he  could  hardly  write 
his  own  name,  and  the  other  that  he  gave  his  owti  children 
no  education. 

The  next  traditional  statement  is  that  "he,  Shakespeare, 
had  by  a  misfortune  common  enough  to  young  fellows 
fallen  into  ill  company;  and  among  them  some  that  made 
a  frequent  practice  of  deer  stealing,  engaged  him  more 
than  once  in  robbing  the  park  that  belonged  to  Sir  Thomas 
Lucy  of  Charlecote,  near  Stratford,  who  had  him  whipped 
and  sometimes  imprisoned,  and  at  last  made  him  fly  his 
native  country  to  his  great  advancement.  But  his  revenge 
was  so  great  that  he  is  his  Justice  Clodpate."'  Since  there 
is  no  Justice  Clodpate  referred  to  or  introduced  into  the 
plays,  the  tradition,  at  the  very  least,  is  devoid  of  accuracy. 
But  even  if  this  story  were  true,  it  affects  the  moral  char- 
acter of  Shaksper  detrimentally,  and  if  all  his  known  life 
facts  do  not  militate  against  the  charge,  as  we  shall  here- 
after see,  it  would  seem  that  he  was  not  only  a  pilferer 
but  a  vindictive  person. 

As  deer  stealing  was  not  to  his  credit,  Malone  and 
others  furiously  attack  the  tradition. 

We  come  now  to  the  tradition  which  treats  of  Shak- 
sper's lasciviousness,  as  set  out  in  Volume  1,  page  331,  of 
the  "History  of  English  Dramatic  Poetry  and  the  Stage." 

"  If  in  the  course  of  my  inquiries,  I  have  been  unlucky 
enough    (I   may   perhaps   say)    to   find   anything   which 


shaksper's  real  and  traditional  life.  157 

represents  our  great  dramatist  in  a  less  favorable  light, 
as  a  human  being  with  human  infirmities,  I  may  lament 
it,  but  I  do  not  therefore  feel  myself  at  liberty  to  conceal 
and  suppress  the  fact.  The  anecdote  is  this:  'Upon  a 
time  when  Burbage  played  Rich.  3,  there  was  a  citizen 
grew  so  far  in  liking  with  him,  that  before  she  went  from 
the  play,  she  appointed  him  to  come  that  night  unto  her, 
by  the  name  of  Rich,  the  3.  Shakespeare  overhearing 
their  conclusion,  went  before,  was  entertained,  and 
at  his  game  ere  Burbage  came.  Then,  message  being 
brought  that  Rich,  the  3  was  at  the  dore,  Shake- 
speare caused  returns  to  be  made,  that  William  the 
Conqueror  was  before  Rich,  the  3.  Shakespeare's  name 
Willm.'" 

If  this  story  be  true,  to  say  the  very  least,  it  presents 
the  man  Shaksper  to  us  in  a  very  unfavorable  light.  No 
comment  is  necessary. 

Next  and  last  in  order  we  have  the  traditional  account 
of  William  Shaksper's  last  sickness  and  death. 

The  diary  of  the  Rev.  John  Ward  contains  the  follow- 
ing undated  paragraph : 

"Shakespeare,  Drayton,  and  Ben  Jonson  had  a  merie 
meeting,  and  it  seems,  drank  too  hard,  for  Shakespeare 
died  of  a  fever  there  contracted." 

Here,  then,  we  have  four  items  of  traditional  evidence 
which,  if  we  accept  them  as  in  the  main  reliable, .  show 
that  William  Shaksper  was  a  person  of  limited  education; 
that  he  was,  while  a  young  man,  addicted  to  bad  habits, 
and  the  associate  of  poachers  and  idlers;  that  in  the 
middle  of  life,  he  was  lewd  and  lascivious;  and  that  his 
last  sickness  and  death  were  caused  by  a  drunken 
spree. 


158  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

If  we  connect  these  traditional  statements  with  the 
known  facts  about  his  Hfe,  it  will  be  very  plainly  seen 
that  they  correspond. 

His  illiteracy  is  confirmed  by  his  wretched  handwriting 
and  by  his  failure  to  educate  his  own  children.  If  he 
had  been  a  man  of  good  habits  and  honest  and  straight- 
forward in  his  dealings,  he  never  would  have  attempted 
to  perpetrate  the  fraud  as  to  the  grant  of  arms  for  his 
father.  It  he  had  been  a  virtuous  gentleman,  he  would 
have  treated  his  wife  decently  and  would  not  have  indulged 
in  any  illicit  amours.  And  if  he  had  been  the  exemplary, 
gentle,  modest,  and  temperate  man  whom  his  admirers 
desire  all  mankind  to  worship,  he  never  would  have 
indulged  in  a  wretched  drinking  bout  with  Ben  Jonson  or 
any  one  else.  I  do  not  wonder  that  Hallam  says  of  the 
man  whom  he  supposes  to  be  the  author  of  the  plays 
that  "  to  be  told  that  he  played  a  trick  on  a  brother  player 
in  a  licentious  amour,  or  that  he  died  of  a  drunken  frolic, 
does  not  exactly  inform  us  of  the  man  who  wrote  Lear." 

Rowe,  being  unable  to  fit  Shaksper's  life  to  the  plays, 
says  that  "  the  character  of  the  man  is  best  seen  in  his 
writings."  The  reader  will  agree  with  me  that  the  char- 
acter of  the  man  would  be  of  some  importance  if  he  had 
the  ability  to  write  the  Shakespeare  plays  and  poems. 
Shaksper  may  have  been  a  pilferer,  a  usurer,  a  libertine, 
a  drunkard,  and  prone  to  litigiosity,  and  yet  with  all 
these  faults,  he  might  have  been  a  competent  composer 
of  plays  and  poems,  if  he  had  had  the  requisite  education. 
Francis  Bacon,  to  whom  the  plays  have  been  ascribed  by 
many,  was  a  barrator,  a  fawning  sycophant,  an  ingrate, 
and  a  persistent  office-hunter,  but  he  was  a  well-educated 
and  trained  scholar. 


shaksper's  real  and  traditional  life.  159 

The  Shaksper  biographers,  acting  on  Rowe's  sugges- 
tion, and  finding  nothing  savory  in  Shaksper's  hfe,  have 
undertaken  to  manufacture  long  and  learned  biographies 
of  the  man,  not  from  the  facts,  but  from  the  writings 
wrongly  attributed  to  him.  All  of  them,  except  Farmer, 
have  overlooked  the  disabling  fact  of  Shaksper's  ignorance. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE   PLAYS   WERE  WRITTEN   BY  A    PROTESTANT   OR 
PROTESTANTS. 

"Art  thou  a  churchmanf" 

—Twelfth  Night,  iii,  1. 

No  disinterested  and  observing  person  can  read  the 
Shakespeare  plays  without  noticing  that  the  author  or 
authors  were  thoroughly  Protestant.  Hatred  of  Roman 
Catholicism  appears  in  the  plays,  wherever  it  was  thought 
necessary  to  allude  to  any  form  of  religion.  While  there 
were  occasional  flings  at  Puritanism,  they  were  slight  and 
weak  when  contrasted  with  the  heavy  blows  aimed  in  the 
pla5^s  at  the  pretensions  of  the  Papacy.  The  writer  or 
writers  were  ardent  believers  in  the  principles  of  the 
English  reformers.  A  few  examples  will  suffice  to  show 
not  only  that  these  exhibitions  of  detestation  of  Roman 
Catholicism  were  inserted  in  the  plays  to  please  the  adher- 
ents of  the  Reformation,  but  also  that  they  were  the  utter- 
ances of  a  Protestant  zealot.  In  the  play  of  "The  Life 
and  Death  of  King  John,"  Act  3,  Scene  1,  Pandulph.  the 
Pope's  legate,  is  made  to  say: 

''Hail,  you  anointed  deputies  of  heaven! 
To  thee.  King  John,  my  holy  errand  is. 
I' Pandulph,  of  fair  Milan  cardinal. 
And  from  Pope  Innocent  the  legate  here, 
Do  in  his  name  religiously  demand 
Why  thou  against  the  church,  our  holy  mother. 
So  wilfully  dost  spurn ;  and  force  perforce 
Keep  Stephen  Langton,  chosen  archbishop 


WRITTEN   BY  A  PROTESTANT   OR  PROTESTANTS.        161 

Of  Canterbury,  from  that  holy  see? 
This,  in  our  'foresaid  holy  father's  name. 
Pope  Innocent,  I  do  demand  of  thee. 

K.  John — 

What  earthy  name  to  interrogatories 

Can  task  the  free  breath  of  a  sacred  king? 

Thou  canst  not,  cardinal,  devise  a  name 

So  slight,  unworthy  and  ridiculous,- 

To  charge  me  to  an  answer,  as  the  pope. 

Tell  him  this  tale;  and  from  the  mouth  of  England 

Add  thus  much  more,  that  no  Italian  priest 

Shall  tithe  or  toll  in  our  dominions; 

But  as  we,  unc'pr  heaven,  are  supreme  head. 

So,  under  heaven,  that  great  supremacy, 

Where  we  do  reign,  we  will  alone  uphold. 

Without  the  assistance  of  a  mortal  hand : 

So  tell  the  pope,  all  reverence  set  apart 

To  him  and  his  usurp'd  authority. 

King  Phi. — 

Brother  of  England,  you  blaspheme  in  this. 

King  John — 

Though  you,  and  all  the  kings  of  Christendom 

Are  led  so  grossly  by  this  meddling  priest, 

Dreading  the  curse  that  money  may  buy  out; 

And  by  the  merit  of  vile  gold,  dross,  dust. 

Purchase  corrupted  pardon  of  a  man 

Who  in  that  sale  sells  pardon  from  himself, 

Though  you  and  all  the  rest  so  grossly  led 

This  juggling  witchcraft  with  revenue  cherish. 

Yet  I  alone,  alone  do  me  oppose 

Against  the  pope,  and  count  his  friends  my  foes. 

Pand. — 

Then,  by  the  lawful  power  that  I  have. 
Thou  shalt  stand  curs'd  and  excommunicate: 


162  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

And  blessed  shall  he  be  that  doth  revolt 
From  his  allegiance  to  an  heretic; 
And  meritorious  shall  that  hand  be  call'd, 
Canonized  and  worshipp'd  as  a  saint, 
That  takes  away  by  any  secret  course 
Thy  hateful  life." 

And  a  little  further  on,  Pandulph,  addressing  King 
Philip,  says: 

"  Philip  of  France,  on  peril  of  a  curse. 
Let  go  the  hand  of  that  arch-heretic ; 
And  raise  the  power  of  France  upon  his  head, 
Unless  he  do  submit  himself  to  Rome." 

In  Titus  Andronicus,  Act  5,  Scene  1,  Aaron  says, 
"with  twenty  popish  tricks  and  ceremonies." 

Henry  the  Eighth  is  a  thoroughly  Protestant  play. 
The  second  scene  of  act  five,  which  depicts  the  bringing 
of  Cranmer  before  the  Council  Chamber,  the  accusation 
against  him  of  filling  the  whole  realm  with  new  opinions 
and  heresies,  his  defense  and  protection  by  the  bluff 
Harry,  who  had  shaken  off  the  temporal  tyranny  of  Rome, 
is  clearly  the  work  of  an  enemy  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  The  grand  eulogium  pronounced  by  Cranmer 
upon  Queen  Elizabeth  at  her  baptism,  contained  in  the 
fourth^  scene  of  the  same  act,  testifies  also  very  strongly 
to  the  Protestantism  of  the  writer  of  the  play.  Cranmer 
says: 

''Let  me  speak,  sir. 
For  heaven  now  bids  me ;  and  the  words  I  utter 
Let  none  think  flattery,  for  they'll  find  'em  truth. 
This  royal  infant — heaven  still  move  about  her ! — 
Though  in  her  cradle,  yet  now  promises 
Upon  this  land  a  thousand  thousand  blessings. 
Which  time  shall  bring  to  ripeness:  she  shall  be — 


WRITTEN  BY  A  PROTESTANT  OR  PROTESTANTS.   163 

But  few  now  living  can  behold  that  goodness — 

A  pattern  to  all  princes  living  with  her, 

And  all  that  shall  succeed :  Saba  was  never 

More  covetous  of  wisdom,  and  fair  virtue, 

Than  this  pure  soul  shall  be:  All  princely  graces, 

That  mould  up  such  a  mighty  piece  as  this  is, 

With  all  the  virtues  that  attend  the  good, 

Shall  still  be  doubled  on  her:  truth  shall  nurse  her; 

Holy  and  heavenly  thoughts  shall  counsel  her : 

She  shall  be  lov'd  and  fear'd:  her  own  shall  bless  her; 

Her  foes  shake  like  a  field  of  beaten  corn, 

And  hang  their  heads  with  sorrow:  good  grows  with 

her: 
In  her  days  every  man  shall  eat  in  safety, 
Under  his  own  vine,  what  he  plants;  and  sing 
The  merry  songs  of  peace  to  all  his  neighbors: 
God  shall  be  truly  known;  and  those  about  her 
From  her  shall  read  the  perfect  ways  of  honour. 
And  by  those  claim  their  greatness,  not  by  blood. 
Nor  shall  this  peace  sleep  with  her:  but  as  when 
The  bird  of  wonder  dies,  the  maiden  phoenix, 
Her  ashes  new  create  another  heir. 
As  great  in  admiration  as  herself; 
So  shall  she  leave  her  blessedness  to  one, 
^Vhen  heaven  shall  call  her  from  this  cloud  of  dark- 
ness. 
Who  from  the  sacred  ashes  of  her  honour 
Shall  star-like  rise,  as  great  in  fame  as  she  was, 
And  so  stand  fix'd:  Peace,  plenty,  love,  truth,  terror, 
That  were  the  servants  to  this  chosen  infant. 
Shall  then  be  his,  and  like  a  vine  grow  to  him : 
Wherever  the  bright  sun  of  heaven  shall  shine, 
His  honour  and  the  greatness  of  his  name 
Shall  be,  and  make  new  nations:  he  shall  flourish, 
And,  like  a  mountain  cedar,  reach  his  branches 
To  all  the  plains  about  him:  Our  children's  children 
-Shall  see  this,  and  bless  heaven. 


164  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

King — 

Thou  speakest  wonders. 

Cran. — 

She  shall  be,  to  the  happiness  of  England, 

An  aged  princess;  many  days  shall  see  her, 

And  yet  no  day  without  a  deed  to  crown  it. 

Would  I  had  known  no  more !  but  she  must  die ; 

She  must,  the  saints  must  have  her;  yet  a  virgin, 

A  most  unspotted  lily  shall  she  pass 

To  the  ground,  and  all  the  world  shall  mourn  her." 

Donnelly,  in  his  Cryptogram,  calls  this  portion  of  the 
play  the  Apotheosis  of  Cranmer.  He  says  that  ''it  is  to 
be  remembered  that  it  was  in  this  reign  that  Protestant- 
ism was  established  in  England,  and  the  man  who,  above 
all  others,  was  instrumental  in  bringing  about  the  great 
change  was  Thomas  Cranmer,  the  first  Protestant  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury.  He,  above  all  other  men,  was  hated 
by  the  Roman  Catholics.  He,  it  was,  who  had  sanc- 
tioned the  divorce  of  Henry  from  Catharine;  he,  it  was, 
who  had  delivered  the  crown  to  Anne  upon  the  corona- 
tion; he  had  supported  the  suppression  of  the  monas- 
teries; he  had  persecuted  the  Roman  Catholic  prelates 
and  people,  sending  numbers  to  the  stake;  and  when  the 
Roman  Catholics  returned  to  powder  under  Mary,  one  of 
the  first  acts  of  the  government  was  to  burn  him  alive 
opposite  Baliol  College.  It  is  impossible  that  a  Roman 
Catholic  writer  of  the  next  reign  could  have  gone  out  of 
his  way  to  defend  and  praise  Cranmer,  to  represent  him 
as  a  good  and  holy  man  and  even  an  inspired  prophet. 
And  yet,  all  this  we  find  in  the  play  of  Henry  VIII.  The 
play  is,  in  fact,  in  large  part,  an  apotheosis  of  Cranmer. 


)> 


WRITTEN   BY   A    PROTESTANT   OR   PROTESTANTS.         165 

A  Roman  Catholic  would  not  have  made  Juliet  say  to 
Friar  Lawrence,  in  Romeo  and  Juliet,  Act  4,  Scene  1: 

''Are  you  at  leisure,  holy  father,  now; 
Or  shall  I  come  to  you  at  evening  mass?" 

Sir  Walter  Scott,  a  good  Protestant,  knew  better  when 
he  said,  in  Ivanhoe,  Chapter  32:  ''A  mass  amongst 
Christian  men  best  begins  on  a  busy  morning." 

A  Protestant  dramatist,  however  scantily  paid  for  his 
productions,  and  writing  currente  calamo  in  order  to  fulfil 
his  contract  with  the  manager  of  the  theatre,  would  not 
care  whether  he  said  evening,  morning,  or  noonday  mass. 
For  illustration  as  to  haste,  when  Monday  agreed  with 
Henslowe  to  write  a  comedy  for  the  Court,  Drayton 
guaranteed  that  it  should  be  ready  in  two  weeks.  (Hen- 
slowe's  Diary,  page  131.) 

Recurring  to  King  John,  it  should  be  stated  that  in 
the  "Troublesome  Reign  of  King  John,"  the  earlier  play 
which  afforded  much  of  the  material  for  the  construction 
of  the  King  John  of  the  Folio  of  1623,  the  flings  at  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  were  more  virulent  and  bitter 
than  in  the  present  play.  Collier,  in  his  introduction  to 
the  revised  play,  commenting  upon  the  Troublesome 
Reign,  says,  "although  Shakespeare,  like  the  author  or 
authors  of  the  old  King  John,  employs  the  Bastard  forcibly 
to  raise  money  from  the  monasteries  in  England,  he  avoids 
the  scenes  of  extortion  arid  ribaldry  in  the  older  play  in 
which  the  monks  and  nuns  are  turned  into  ridicule  and 
the  indecency  and  licentiousness  of  their  lives  exposed. 
Supposing  the  old  King  John  to  have  been  brought  upon 
the  stage  not  long  after  the  defeat  of  the  Spanish  Armada 
in  1588,  when  the  hatred  of  the  Roman  Catholics  was  at 


166  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

its  height,  such  an  exhibition  must  have  been  extremely 
gratifying  to  the  taste  of  vulgar  audiences." 

It  will  be  clear  to  any  one  who  will  carefully  read  the 
first  part  of  Henry  the  Sixth,  that  the  writer  of  the  fourth 
scene  of  the  fifth  act  was  disposed  to  picture  the  Maid  of 
Orleans,  who  is  held  in  saintly  reverence  by  many  mem- 
bers of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  as  a  most  depraved 
and  immoral  woman,  guilty  of  witchcraft  and  fornication 
on  her  own  confession.  I  am  inclined  to  think,  however, 
that  this  denunciation  of  Joan  of  Arc  sprang  more  from 
the  desire  of  the  writer  to  pander  to  the  British  feeling 
against  and  the  British  hatred  of  France,  prevailing  at 
that  time,  than  from  any  religious  motive. 

The  allusions  to  Puritanism  are  jocose  rather  than 
severe,  as,  for  instance,  in  Twelfth  Night,  Act  2,  Scene  3, 
the  following  dialogue  takes  place: 

"Mar. — Marry,  sir,  sometimes  he  is  a  kind  of  a  Puritan. 

Sir  And. — 0!  if  I  thought  that,  I'd  beat  him  like  a  dog. 

Sir  To. — What,  for  being  a  Puritan?  thy  exquisite 
reason,  dear  knight? 

Sir  And. — I  have  no  exquisite  reason  for't,  but  I  have 
reason  good  enough. 

Mar. — The  devil  a  Puritan  that  he  is,  or  anything 
constantly,  but  a  time  pleaser." 

So  also  in  All's  Well,  Act  1,  Scene  3,  the  clown  says, 
"for  young  Charbon,  the  Puritan,  and  old  Poysam,  the 
papist,"  and  a  little  further  on,  he  says,  ''though  honesty 
be  no  Puritan." 

InWinter'sTale,  Act4,Scene  2, the  clown  says:  "But  one 
Puritan  amongst  them  and  he  says  psalms  to  hornpipes," 
while  in  Pericles,  Act  4,  Scene  6,  the  bawd  says,  speaking 
of  Marina,  "She  would  make  a  Puritan  of  the  devil." 


WRITTEN  BY   A   PROTESTANT  OR   PROTESTANTS.        167 

If  Francis  Bacon  either  originated  or  revised  the  Shake- 
speare plays,  or  some  of  them,  the  citations  from  the  plays, 
above  set  out,  would  be  in  consonance  with  his  own  belief. 
Thus,  for  instance,  in  his  instructions  to  Sir  George  Villiers, 
afterward  Duke  of  Buckingham,  as  to  how  Villiers  should 
govern  himself  in  the  station  of  Prime  Minister  of  the 
kingdom,  he  said,  "In  the  first  place,  be  you  yourself 
rightly  persuaded  and  settled  in  the  true  Protestant  re- 
ligion professed  by  the  Church  of  England,  which,  doubt- 
less, is  as  sound  and  orthodox  in  the  doctrine  thereof  as 
any  Christian  Church  in  the  world." 

A  little  farther  on,  still  speaking  of  the  Church  of 
England,  he  said:  "The  enemies  and  underminers  thereof 
are  the  Roman  Catholics,  so  styling  themselves,  on  the 
one  hand,  whose  tenets  are  inconsistent  with  the  truth  of 
religion  professed  and  protested  by  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, whence  we  are  called  Protestants,  and  the  Anabaptists 
and  Separatists  and  Sectaries  on  the  other  hand." 

Again,  in  another  place,  speaking  of  superstition,  he 
said:  "The  causes  of  superstition  are  pleasing  and  sensual 
rites  and  ceremonies;  excess  of  outward  and  pharisaical 
holiness,  over-great  reverence  of  traditions  which  can  not 
but  load  the  church;  the  stratagems  of  prelates  for  their 
own  ambition  and  lucre,  and  the  favoring  too  much  of  good 
intentions  which  openeth  the  gates  to  conceits  and  novel- 
ties." 

In  writing  of  judicature,  he  said  that  "Judges  ought  to 
remember  that  their  office  is  Jus  dicere  and  not  Jus  dare; 
to  interpret  law  and  not  to  make  law  or  give  law.  Else 
will  it  be  like  the  authority  claimed  by  the  Church  of 
Rome,  which,  under  pretext  of  exposition  of  Scripture, 
doth  not  stick  to  add  and  alter;  and  to  pronounce  that 


168  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

which  they  do  not  find,  and  by  show  of  antiquity,  to  in- 
troduce novelty." 

The  reader,  I  trust,  will  pardon  a  little  moralizing  here. 
What  Bacon  wTote  nearly  three  centuries  ago  about  super- 
stition, as  elaborated  in  his  essays,  finds  its  verification  in 
the  strong  hold  which  superstition  has  upon  the  minds  of 
the  inhabitants  of  the  Empire  of  Russia,  who  are  domi- 
nated by  the  Greek  Church.  This  subjection  to  supersti- 
tion is  illustrated  in  the  preparation  of  the  Russians  for 
and  their  conduct  of  the  war  with  Japan.  AMiile  the 
Japanese  rely  for  success  in  the  warfare  now  waging  between 
Japan  and  Russia  upon  the  best,  the  very  best  war  material 
for  the  army  and  navy,  the  best  weapons,  the  best  food  and 
clothing  and  the  best  training  for  their  soldiers  and  offi- 
cers, the  superstitious  Russians  greatly  rely  upon  sacred 
relics,  so-called — as,  for  instance,  the  toe  of  St.  Serge, 
pictures  and  icons  (fabled  to  have  supernatural  powers) 
to  win  victories  for  them.  It  is  no  wonder  that  men  be- 
come atheists  when  they  find  that  the  church  (using  the 
term  in  its  general  sense,  so  as  to  embrace  all  Christian 
bodies  excepting  the  peace-loving  Society  of  Friends), 
which  claims  to  have  Christ,  the  preacher  and  Prince  of 
Peace,  as  its  founder  and  head,  aids  and  abets  belligerent 
rulers  and  warring  nations  in  their  reckless  and  bloody 
contests  for  supremacy.  Men  of  sense  and  discernment 
know  that  there  is  a  God  of  Peace  and  Good-will  to  all 
men,  and  they  also  know^  that  there  is  no  God  of  Battles, 
unless  it  be  the  devil,  and  that  until  a  court  of  arbitrament 
between  nations,  with  power  to  make  and  enforce  its  decrees 
is  established,  the  divinity  which  wHll  settle  international 
controversies  is  not  a  relic  nor  a  painting  nor  a  saint's 
picture,  nor  an  icon  nor  even  a  prayer,  but  the  scientific 


WRITTEN   BY   A    PROTESTANT    OR    PROTESTANTS.        169 

collocation  of  the  best-trained  fighters  under  the  leader- 
ship of  the  most  skillful  generals,  with  the  most  approved 
weapons,  light  and  hea\^',  which  military  ingenuity  can 
invent  and  supply  as  aganst  a  power  inferior  in  these 
equipments. 

Frederick  of  Prussia  said  that  he  always  found  the 
God  of  Battles  to  be  on  the  side  of  the  strongest  and  best- 
equipped  regiments. 

AVhen  Croesus,  in  his  ostentation,  exhibited  his  great 
stores  of  gold  to  Solon,  that  wise  lawgiver  said  to  him: 
''Sir,  if  any  other  come  that  hath  better  iron  than  you, 
he  will  be  master  of  all  the  gold." 

Sensible  men  also  know  that  such  a  court  of  final  arbi- 
trament could  be  firmly  and  permanently  established  if 
the  Church  of  God,  following  the  example  of  the  despised 
Quakers,  would  steadfastly  range  itself  on  the  side  of 
everlasting  peace  between  nations. 

Charles  Sumner,  in  his  admirable  oration  on  the  "True 
Grandeur  of  Nations,"  thus  speaks  of  the  tremendous  in- 
fluence which  war,  though  condemned  by  Christ,  has  de- 
rived from  the  church : 

"The  Christian  Church,  after  the  first  centuries  of  its 
existence,  failed  to  discern  the  peculiar  spiritual  beauty  of 
the  faith  which  it  professed.  Like  Constantine,  it  found 
new  incentives  to  war  in  the  religion  of  peace ;  and  such  has 
been  its  character — let  it  be  said  fearlessly — even  to  our  own 
day.  The  Pope  of  Rome,  the  asserted  head  of  the  Church, 
the  Vicegerent  of  Christ  on  earth,  whose  seal  is  a  fisherman, 
on  whose  banner  is  a  lamb  before  the  holy  cross,  assumed 
the  command  of  armies,  often  mingling  the  thunders  of 
battle  with  those  of  the  Vatican.  The  dagger  which  pro- 
jected from  the  sacred  vestments  of  the  Archbishop  de 


170  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Retz,  as  he  appeared  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  was  called 
by  the  people  'the  Archbishop's  Prayer  Book.'  We  read 
of  mitred  prelates  in  armour  of  proof,  and  seem  still  to 
catch  the  jingle  of  the  golden  spurs  of  the  bishops  in  the 
streets  of  Cologne.  The  sword  of  knighthood  was  con- 
secrated by  the  church;  and  priests  were  often  the  expert 
masters  in  military  exercises." 

To  William  Penn  belongs  the  distinction,  destined  to 
brighten  as  men  advance  in  virtue,  of  first  in  human  his- 
tory establishing  the  law  of  love,  as  a  rule  of  conduct  for 
the  intercourse  of  nations. 

A  great  man,  worthy  of  the  mantle  of  Penn,  the  ven- 
erable philanthropist  Clarkson,  in  his  life  of  the  founder 
of  Pennsylvania,  says:  "The  Pennsylvanians  became 
armed,  though  without  arms;  they  became  strong,  though 
without  strength;  they  became  safe,  without  the  ordi- 
nary means  of  safety.  This  pattern  of  a  Christian  Com- 
monwealth never  fails  to  arrest  the  admiration  of  all  who 
contemplate  its  beauties.  It  drew  an  epigram  of  eulogy 
from  the  caustic  pen  of  A^'oltaire,  and  has  been  fondly 
painted  by  many  virtuous  historians.  Every  ingenuous 
soul  in  our  day  offers  his  willing  tribute  to  those  celestial 
graces  of  justice  and  humanity,  by  the  side  of  which  the 
flinty  hardness  of  the  Pilgrims  of  Plymouth  Rock  seems 
earthly  and  coarse." 

The  true  Shakespeare,  speaking  in  the  same  human- 
itarian and  Christian  spirit,  causes  Westmoreland,  in 
Act  4,  Scene  1,  of  Second  Henry  the  Fourth,  to  rebuke  the 
martial  Archbishop  of  York  in  the  followmg  language: 

"  You,  lord  archbishop. 
Whose  see  is  by  a  civil  peace  maintain' d. 
Whose  beard  the  silver  hand  of  peace  hath  touch' d. 


WRITTEN    BY    A  PROTESTANT   OF    PROTESTANTS.        171 

^Miose  learning  and  good  letters  peace  hath  tutor' d, 

"Whose  white  investments  figure  innocence, 

The  dove  and  very  blessed  spirit  of  peace, 

Wherefore  do  you  so  ill  translate  yourself 

Out  of  the  speech  of  peace  that  bears  such  grace. 

Into  the  harsh  and  boisterous  tongue  of  war?" 

Returning  to  the  question  of  Shaksper's  religious  belief, 
a  reference  to  the  list  of  competent  and  learned  play- 
writers  who  were  contemporary  with  Shaksper  will  show 
that  they  were  all  Protestants,  some  of  them  being  bigoted 
Protestants. 

It  may  be  remarked  in  this  connection  that  the  play 
of  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  which  was  written  by  four  drama- 
tists, Anthony  Monday,  Michael  Drayton,  Robert  W^ilson, 
and  Richard  Hathaway,  and  which  was  published  in  the 
name  of  William  Shakespeare,  was  also  a  thoroughly 
Protestant  production.  Monday  was  an  intense  and  vin- 
dictive hater  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  and  Drayton  also 
was  imbued  with  the  principles  of  the  English  Reforma- 
tion. So,  also,  was  Thomas  Dekker.  If  Davies  is  to  be 
trusted,  the  ignorant  William  Shaksper  was  a  Roman 
Catholic.  WTiile  Davies  gives  no  reason  for  his  state- 
ment, it  would  be  natural  that  the  uneducated  son  of  an 
uneducated  man  would  adopt  and  live  and  die  in  the 
faith  of  his  parents,  and  it  is  an  undisputed  fact  that  John 
Shaksper,  the  father,  was  a  Roman  Catholic. 

Halliwell-Phillips,  in  his  second  volume  of  the  "  Outlines 
of  the  Life  of  Shaksper,"  page  397,  says  that  before  Sep- 
tember, 1592,  the  name  of  John  Shaksper  (William's 
father)  was  included  in  a  list  of  recusants  who  were  pre- 
sented for  not  coming  monthly  to  church  according  to  the 
laws  of  her  Majesty,  Queen  Elizabeth;  and  in  idem,  Vol. 


172  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

I,  page  264,  he  says  that  ''there  is  no  doubt  that  John 
Shaksper  nourished  all  the  while  a  latent  attachment  to 
the  old  religion,  and  although  like  most  unconverted  non- 
conformists of  ordinary  discretion  who  were  exposed 
to  the  inquisitorial  tactics  of  the  authorities,  he  may  have 
attempted  to  conceal  his  views  even  from  the  members  of 
his  own  household;  yet  still,  however  determinately  he 
may  have  refrained  from  giving  them  expression,  it 
generally  happens  in  such  cases  that  a  wave  from 
the  religious  spirit  of  a  parent  will  imperceptibly  reach 
the  hearts  of  his  children  and  exercise  more  or  less  in- 
fluence on  their  perceptions.  And  this  last  presump- 
tion is  an  important  consideration  in  assessing  the  degree 
of  credit  to  be  given  to  the  earliest  notice  that  has  come 
down  to  us  respecting  the  character  of  Shaksper's  own 
belief,  the  assertion  of  Davies  that  'he  died  a  Papist.' 
That  this  was  the  local  tradition  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
Seventeenth  Century  does  not  admit  of  rational  question. 
If  the  statement  had  emanated  from  a  man  like  Prynne 
addressing  fanatics,  whose  hatred  of  a  stage-player  would, 
if  possible,  have  been  intensified  by  the  knowledge  that  he 
was  a  Romanist,  then,  indeed,  a  legitimate  suspicion 
might  have  been  entertained  of  the  narrator's  integrity; 
but  here  we  have  the  testimony  of  a  sober  clergyman,  who 
could  have  no  conceivable  motive  for  deception  in  what 
is  obviously  the  casual  note  of  a  provincial  hearsay." 
Phillips,  in  the  foregoing,  alludes  to  the  statement  of  the 
Reverend  Richard  Davies,  made  in  the  year  1685,  that 
Shaksper  was  a  Roman  Catholic. 

Strong  says,  at  page  11,  in  his  book  on  "The  Great 
Poets  and  their  Theology":  "In  the  plays  there  is  no 
trace  of  Mariolatry  nor  of  dependence  for  salvation  upon 


WRITTEN   BY   A    PROTESTANT  OR    PROTESTANTS.        173 

ritual  or  ce^emon3^  Yet  Shakespeare  is  as  devoid  of 
Puritanism  as  he  is  of  Romish  superstition.  In  an  age  of 
much  clerical  corruption,  he  never  rails  at  the  clergy. 
While  he  has  some  most  ungodly  prelates,  his  priests  are 
all  a  credit  to  their  calling.  None  of  his  characters  are 
disseminators  of  skepticism.  I  can  not  explain  all  this, 
except  by  supposing  that  Shakespeare  was  himself  a  be- 
liever. Though  he  was  not  a  theological  dogmatist  nor 
an  ecclesiastical  partisan,  he  was  unerringly  assured  of 
the  fundamental  verities  of  the  Christian  scheme.  Shake- 
speare had  dug  down  through  superficial  formulas  to  the 
bed-rock  of  Christian  doctrine.  He  held  the  truths  which 
belong  in  common  to  all  ages  of  the  church.  If  any  deny 
the  personality  of  God,  or  the  divinity  of  Christ,  they 
have  a  controversy  with  Shakespeare.  If  any  think  it 
irrational  to  believe  m  man's  depravity,  guilt  and  need  of 
supernatural  redemption,  the}^  must  also  be  prepared  to 
say  that  Shakespeare  did  not  understand  human  nature." 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

SHAKSPER,    IF   LEARNED,    COULD   NOT   HAVE   WRITTEN 

THE    PLAYS. 

"Men  of  few  words  are  the  best  men." 

— Henry  V,  iii,  2. 

When  I  assert  that  WilHam  Shaksper,  even  if  a  very- 
learned  man,  could  not  have  written  the  plays,  I  mean  by 
that  assertion  that  no  one  man,  however  gifted  with  edu- 
cation and  talent,  could  by  any  possibility  have  written 
the  plays.  I  assert  the  same  as  to  the  scholarly  Bacon, 
rare  Ben  Jonson,  or  any  other  writer  of  the  period  during 
which  the  plays  were  written.  I  do  not  expect  to  con- 
vince by  my  reasons  for  this  assertion  any  reader  who 
believes  that  William  Shaksper  from  the  crown  of  his  head 
to  the  soles  of  his  feet  was  divine  and  not  in  the  roll  of 
common  mortals.  Being  one  of  those  who  believe  with 
Lafeu,  in  All's  Well  that  Ends  Well,  Act  2,  Scene  3,  that 
since  the  Apostolic  days  ''all  miracles  are  past,"  I  weigh 
this  Shaksper  intellectually  as  other  men  must  be  weighed, 
and  I  will  apply  to  him  the  test  of  fact. 

I  support  my  assertion  by  two  infallible  propositions, 
one  being  the  sequence  of  the  other.  The  first,  which  I 
will  elaborate  in  this  chapter,  is  that  no  one  man  in  the 
Sixteenth  Century,  or  in  any  century  before  or  since,  leaving 
out  the  God-man,  our  Savior,  could  use  as  many  words  as 
are  found  in  the  plays,  and  the  second  proposition  is  that 
an  examination  of  the  plays  in  the  crucial  manner  to  be 
hereafter  explained  shows  that  three  men  at  the  very 
least  participated  in  the  preparation  and  composition  of 


SHAKSPER  COULD  NOT  HAVE  WRITTEN  THE  PLAYS.     175 

the  plays.  I  may  say  in  passing  that  the  object  of  this 
crucial  test  applied  by  me  was  to  find  the  real  Shakespeare 
— the  real  revisionist — and  not  to  pick  out  all  the  writers, 
good  and  bad,  who  may  have  placed  in  the  plays  an  act 
or  acts,  or  part  of  an  act  here  or  part  of  a  scene  there. 

Upon  a  careful  examination  and  study  of  the  plays,  I 
have  found  what  the  diligence  of  others  has  also  estab- 
lished and  verified,  that  they  contain  over  twenty-one  thou- 
sand words,  leaving  out,  too,  in  this  computation,  the 
changes  of  particular  words  caused  by  number,  case,  per- 
son, gender,  and  tense.  Let  the  reader  keep  the  fore- 
going fact  in  mind.  Now,  what  is  and  always  has  been 
man's  or  woman's  word  limit?  A  common  farm  laborer 
will  not,  during  his  whole  lifetime,  use  over  five  hundred 
words.  A  business  man,  having  what  is  called  an  average 
education,  either  at  high  school  or  college,  will  not  use 
over  three  thousand  words.  Such  voluminous  and  learned 
writers  as  Scott  or  Thackeray  or  Dickens  were,  and  as 
Lew  Wallace  and  Kipling  are,  did  not  and  do  not  use  even 
five  thousand  words.  John  Milton,  according  to  the  best 
authorities,  surpassed  all  other  writers  as  to  word  use  by 
stretching  the  number  to  seven  thousand.  No  writer, 
unless  it  be  Michael  Drayton,  who  was  a  great  word-coiner, 
has  ever  exceeded  Milton  in  the  use  of  words.  If  Dray- 
ton's works  were  readily  accessible  to  scholars,  it  would 
be  found  that  he  was  primus  inter  pares  as  a  maker  of  words. 

Presumptively,  therefore,  if  the  writers  of  the  plays 
were  as  prolific  in  words  as  Milton  was,  there  were  three 
of  them  at  least  and  each  one  must  have  used  seven  thou- 
sand words  entirely  different  from  the  other  two.  If 
judged  by  the  Thackeray  standard,  there  were  not  less 
than  four  of  them,  unless  we  accept  the  absurd  theory 


176  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

that  if  one  man  wrote  them  all,  thereby  using  twenty-one 
thousand  words,  he  must  have  been  miraculously  en- 
dowed. Dr.  Holmes  destroys  that  theory  when  he  de- 
clares that  "  school  or  no  school,  without  books  and  studies, 
we  know  that  learning  is  impossible."  And  Bulwer  finely 
satirizes  the  believers  in  genius  without  education  when 
he  says:  "A  problem  in  astronomy  or  a  knotty  passage 
in  the  fathers  are  all  riddles,  with  which  application  has 
nothing  to  do.  One's  mother  wit  is  a  precious  sort  of 
necromancy  which  can  pierce  every  mystery  at  first  sight." 
Possibly  the  believers  in  the  divine  Shaksper  afflatus  base 
their  theory  upon  Dogberry's  charge  to  neighbor  Sea- 
cole,  as  found  in  Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  Act  3,  Scene  3, 
''God  hath  blessed  you  with  a  good  name;  to  be  a  well- 
favored  man  is  the  gift  of  fortune,  but  to  write  and  read 
comes  by  nature." 

The  surrounding  facts  support  my  position  that  one 
man  could  not  have  written  the  plays,  and  justify  the 
reader  in  believing  that  plays  produced  in  the  Elizabethan 
era,  generally  speaking,  were  the  work  of  collaborators. 
Henslowe's  Diary,  heretofore  referred  to  in  Chapter  III, 
shows  that  plays  were  so  composed.  Every  critic,  every 
essayist,  every  student,  and  every  commentator,  however 
learned  or  prejudiced,  must  submit  to  Henslowe's  author- 
ity. He  was  no  guesser.  What  he  wrote  was  truthful. 
Although  unlearned  and  a  speller  who  would  rival  Josh 
Billings  in  his  best  days,  he  jotted  down  cold  facts.  His 
Diary  contains  minute,  truthful,  and  valuable  information 
respecting  the  English  drama  in  Shaksper's  time.  It 
contains  the  names  of  plays  identical  with  or  very  similar 
to  the  titles  of  some  of  the  Shakespeare  plays;  it  nowhere 
mentions  Shaksper's  name ;  it  shows  that  the  English  drama- 


SHAKSPER  COULD  NOT  HAVE  WRITTEN  THE  PLAYS.     177 

tists  wrote  plays  and  sold  them  outright  for  trifling  sums 
to  Henslowe;  it  shows  that  these  plays  thereafter  became 
the  property  of  Henslowe;  it  shows  that  certain  dramatists 
were  employed  and  paid  by  Henslowe  to  revise  and  dress 
the  popular  plays  so  purchased  and  adapt  them  to  suit 
the  fastidious  taste  of  the  frequenters  of  the  theatre;  and 
it  also  clearly  shows  that  the  principal  plays  were  com- 
posed hurriedly  by  collaborators — two,  three,  four,  five, 
and  even  six  playv/riters — who,  after  they  had  received 
their  pay,  presumably  cared  nothing  more  for  their  pro- 
ductions. Such  collaboration,  when  applied  to  the  Shake- 
speare plays,  accounts  for  the  great  number  of  words  in 
the  plays.  The  fact  of  collaboration  is  also  supported  by  an 
examination  of  the  style  of  the  plays  and  the  peculiar 
phrases  and  turns  of  expression,  differing  in  the  several 
plays. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  give  the  reader  'here  any  opinion 
of  mine  on  this  point.  He  can  not  take  up  the  work  of 
any  learned  editor  or  commentator,  who  believed  or  be- 
lieves that  the  Shakespeare  plays  were  composed  b}^ 
William  Shaksper,  without  speedily  ascertaining  that  they, 
one  and  all,  when  analyzing  the  plays,  ascribe  their  com- 
position in  part  to  several  poets.  For  instance,  Troilus 
and  Cressida,  some  affirm,  is  the  creation  of  two  poets. 
Very  many  of  them  deny  that  Titus  Andronicus  was 
written  by  Shaksper  at  all.  "  Timon  of  Athens,"  says 
Fleay,  "contains  much  matter  from  another  hand." 
Henry  the  Eighth,  they  say,  was  written  chiefly  by 
Fletcher  and  Massinger,  Shakespeare's  share  in  it  being 
only  three  scenes  in  acts  one  and  two.  A  furious  con- 
troversy, which  has  never  yet  been  settled,  has  raged 
between  the  commentators  headed  bv  Malone  on  one  side 


178  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

and  Johnson  and  Steevens  on  the  other,  as  to  the  parties 
who  composed  First,  Second  and  Third  Henry  the  Sixth. 
With  these  controversies  we  need  not  now  concern  our- 
selves. I  refer  to  them  now  to  support  and  fortify  my 
position  that  it  was  not  in  the  ability  and  power  of  one 
man,  how^ever  learned,  to  be  the  author  of  plays  con- 
taining over  twenty-one  thousand  separate  words. 

That  the  plays  were  composed  by  collaboration  is  also 
supported  by  another  fact  which  has  faced  the  com- 
mentators and  caused  them  to  foolishly  advance  beyond 
the  region  of  common  sense  and  make  of  their  idol  a 
quasi  demi-god.  To  fill  the  place  of  a  sole  author,  they 
discovered  that  he  must  have  been  a  la\\yer,  or  thoroughly 
familiar  with  law  terms  and  legal  principles.  He  must 
have  been  a  physician  or  an  adept  in  medical  science.  He 
must  have  been  a  theologian  or  a  student  of  the  Bible, 
conversant  with  biblical  words  and  phrases.  He  must 
have  been  more  or  less  familiar  with  entomology,  geology, 
botany,  archerj-,  and,  at  the  very  least,  he  must  have  been 
a  student  of  philosophy.  All  these  gifts  the  commen- 
tators have  labored  to  endow  their  idol,  William  Shaksper, 
with,  in  order  to  account  for  the  learning  on  these  subjects 
which  irradiates  and  dignifies  the  plays. 

But  when  in  truth  and  in  fact  it  is  clear  that  originally 
the  plays  were  created  by  several  persons,  all  the  diffi- 
culties vanish.  The  use  of  so  many  words  is  naturally 
explained.  The  differences  in  style  and  methods  of 
expression  are  properly  accounted  for,  and  there  is  room 
enough  in  the  glorious  company  of  the  poets  to  account 
for  all  the  knowledge — legal,  medical,  scientific,  theological, 
specific,  or  general — that  has  hitherto  bothered  the  brains 
of  the  admirers  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  in  their  attempts 


SHAKSPER  COULD  NOT  HAVE  WRITTEN  THE  PLAYS.     179 

to  palm  them  upon  the  pubHc  as  the  offspring  of  one 
man. 

The  fact  of  collaboration  is  also  shown  by  the  labored 
attempts  of  the  learned  commentators  to  account  for  the 
diversity  of  the  style  of  the  plays  by  ascribing  their  com- 
position to  different  periods  in  Shaksper's  life.  One 
period,  imagined — or  rather  invented — by  them,  is  his  comic 
period;  another  is  his  tragic  period,  and  still  another  is 
his  historic  period.  When  he  got  into  one  of  these  periods 
he  had  to  remain  there,  according  to  their  theory,  until 
the  passage  of  that  period.  These  periods  are  set  up  by 
these  commentators  to  explain  the  inequalities  and  irregu- 
larities of  some  of  the  plays,  since,  when  he  was  in  the 
comic  period,  he  could  not  get  out  of  it  and  do  justice  to 
the  tragedy  which  the  theatre-goers  would  demand  of  him. 

Lest  any  reader  should  think  that  I  am  doing  the  com- 
mentators injustice  in  my  statement  of  their  real  views 
as  to  the  authorship,  I  will  give  their  opinions  briefly, 
quoting  from  an  excellent  authority,  Gulien  C.  Verplanck, 
a  learned  man,  who  honestly  believed  in  the  Shaksper 
theory.  These  statements  are  from  the  introductory 
remarks  at  the  beginning  of  each  play  in  Verplanck's 
Shakespeare. 

Referring  to  the  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  he  says 
that  Hanmer  and  Upton  pronounced  with  great  confi- 
dence that  he,  Shaksper,  could  have  had  no  other  hand 
in  it  than  enlivening  with  some  speeches  and  lines,  thrown 
in  here  and  there,  the  production  of  some  inferior  dramatist. 

In  All's  Well  that  Ends  Well,  Coleridge  pointed  out  two 
distinct  styles,  not  only  of  thought,  but  of  expression; 
and  Professor  Tieck,  at  a  later  date,  adopted  and  enforced 
the  same  belief. 


180  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

As  to  Troilus  and  Cressida,  Dryden  said  that  the 
author  began  it  with  some  fire,  but  that  he  grew  weary  of 
his  task,  and  the  latter  part  of  the  tragedy  is  nothing  but 
a  confusion  of  drums,  trumpets,  excursions,  and  alarms. 

As  to  Henry  the  Eighth,  the  theory  is  maintained  by 
Malone,  Steevens,  and  others  that  the  prologue,  parts  of 
Cranmer's  speech  in  the  last  scene,  and  possibly  some  other 
passages,  were  written  by  Ben  Jonson. 

A  majority  of  the  later  English  critics  have  adopted  or 
incline  to  an  hypothesis  brought  out  by  Malone  over 
sixty  years  ago,  that  the  first  part  of  King  Henry  the 
Sixth,  as  it  now  appears  (of  which  no  quarto  copy  is 
extant),  was  the  entire  or  nearly  the  entire  production  of 
some  unknown  ancient  dramatist.  Malone's  opinion  is 
founded  mainly,  as  relates  to  the  first  part,  upon  the 
dissimilarity  of  versification  and  phraseology  to  that  of 
Shakespeare,  and  its  resemblance  in  those  things  to  the 
writings  of  Greene  and  Peele,  and  upon  the  classical 
allusions  and  Latin  quotations,  too  learned  and  too  abun- 
dant for  the  unlettered  Shaksper. 

Verplanck,  speaking  for  himself,  says,  "In  style  and 
versification,  Richard  the  Third  has  much  of  the  cast  of 
those  portions  of  Henry  the  Sixth  denied  to  be  his." 

As  to  Hamlet,  he  says  that  all  the  circumstances  lead 
to  the  belief  that  Hamlet  was  the  work  of  several  different 
periods  of  the  poet's  life. 

The  most  remarkable  comment  is  made  upon  the  play 
of  Pericles.  It  is  a  circumstance  to  be  noted  that  this 
play  did  not  appear  in  the  Folio  of  1623.  Ben  Jonson 
called  it  a  mouldy  tale  made  up  of  scraps  out  of  every 
dish.  Steevens  said  that  the  drama  of  Pericles  "  contains 
no  discrimination  of  manners  (except  in  the  comic  dia- 


SHAKSPER  COULD  NOT  HAVE  WRITTEN  THE  PLAYS.     181 

logue),  very  few  traces  of  original  thought,  and  is  evidently 
destitute  of  that  intelligence  and  useful  knowledge  that 
pervades  even  the  meanest  of  Shakespeare's  undisputed 
performances."     In  this  view  Malone  finally  acquiesced. 

Hallam  says  that  "from  the  poverty  and  bad  manage- 
ment of  the  fable,  the  want  of  effective  and  distinguish- 
able character,  and  the  general  feebleness  of  the  tragedy 
as  a  whole,  I  shall  not  believe  the  structure  to  have  been 
Shakespeare's.  The  play  is  full  of  evident  marks  of  an 
inferior  hand." 

Macbeth  contains,  as  all  the  commentators  agree,  a 
part  of  Middleton's  "Witch." 

But  it  is  against  Titus  Andronicus  that  the  assaults  of 
the  host  of  commentators  are  particularly  directed. 
Verplanck  says  that  a  great  majority  of  the  English 
Shakespearean  editors,  commentators,  and  critics,  includ- 
ing some  of  the  very  highest  names  in  literature,  have 
concurred  in  rejecting  this  bloody  and  repulsive  tragedy 
as  wholly  unworthy  of  Shakespeare,  and  therefore  errone- 
ously ascribed  to  him. 

There  is  another  very  strong  and  convincing  reason  in 
favor  of  the  fact  of  collaboration  in  the  Shakespeare  plays. 
I  refer  to  the  difference,  which  can  not  have  escaped  the 
vigilant  eyes  of  the  commentators,  in  the  pronunciation 
or  accentuation  of  words,  and  the  difference  also  in  names 
as  applied  to  sex  or  to  position  in  the  ranks  of  opposing 
factions.  In  Cymbeline,  Posthumus  is  rightly  and  wrongly 
pronounced,  and  Arviragus  meets  with  similar  treatment. 
Hecate  is  made  a  word  of  two  and  sometimes  three  sylla- 
bles. In  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew,  Baptista  is  a  man, 
while  in  Hamlet,  Baptista  is  characterized  as  a  woman, 
wife  of  Gonzago.     In  the  Merchant  of  Venice,  the  distance 


182  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

between  Venice  and  Belmont  is  changed,  and  in  the  Two 
Gentlemen  of  Verona,  Milan  and  Verona  are  treated  as 
seaport  towns. 

In  Fleay's  "  Life  and  Works  of  Shakespeare,"  the 
author  notes  that  there  are  discrepancies  between  Richard 
III  and  3  Henry  VI,  in  this,  that  Gray,  in  act  one,  scene 
three  of  the  first-named  play,  is  depicted  as  fighting  for 
the  Lancastrians,  whereas  in  the  second  he  is  repre- 
sented as  a  Yorkist,  a  fact  which  shows  a  different  hand 
in  the  two  plays. 

It  is  amusing  to  read  Verplanck's  reflection.  "The 
glorious  uncertainty  of  the  law,"  he  says,  "  has  been  exem- 
plified and  commemorated  in  a  large  and  closely  printed 
volume,  containing  nothing  but  the  mere  title  of  legal 
decisions,  once  acknowledged  to  be  law,  and  since  reversed 
or  contradicted  as  'cases  overruled,  doubted,  or  denied.' 
The  decisions  of  the  critical  tribunals  would  furnish 
material  for  a  much  larger  work.  And  Shakespeare 
criticism  by  itself  would  supply  an  ample  record  of  varying 
or  overruled  judgments." 

In  the  Shakespeare  case,  evil  has  been  caused  by  two 
errors — the  first,  in  the  foolish  belief  that  an  ignorant 
man  could  write  plays  at  all,  and  second,  m  the  belief, 
as  foolish  and  baseless  as  the  first,  that  one  man  could 
be  the  sole  composer  of  works  containing  over  twenty 
thousand  different  words. 

A  late  author,  Webb,  in  his  summary  of  evidence, 
presents  the  views  of  the  commentators  who  ask  the 
general  reader  to  believe  in  the  unity  of  Shakespeare, 
showing  thereby  that  even  they  have  no  confidence  in  the 
theory.  At  page  20  of  his  chapter  entitled  "The  Unity 
of  Shakespeare,"  he  says: 


SHAKSPER  COULD  NOT  HAVE  WRITTEN  THE  PLAYS.     183 

"To  the  Shakespearean  scholars  of  the  day,  the  plays 
of  Shakespeare,  like  the  Iliad  of  Homer,  are  a  noise  of 
many  waters.  Mr.  Swinburne  tells  us  that  no  scholar 
believes  in  the  single  authorship  of  Andronicus;  that  no 
scholar  questions  the  part  taken  by  'some  hireling  or 
journeyman'  in  Timon,  and  that  'few  probably  would 
refuse  to  admit  a  doubt  of  the  total  authenticity  or 
uniform  workmanship  of  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew.'  A 
host  of  experts,  following  in  the  footsteps  of  Malone, 
assert  that  the  Second  and  Third  parts  of  King  Henry 
the  Sixth  include  the  work  of  Marlowe.  The  writers  in 
the  Henry  Irving  Shakespeare  ascribe  the  last  act  of 
Troilus  and  Cressida  to  Dekker.  Mr.  Swinburne  com- 
plains that  the  most  characteristic  portion  of  Macbeth 
has  been  attributed  to  Middleton.  Mr.  Phillips  contends 
that  the  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  has  been  interpolated 
by  a  botcher.  Mr.  Lee  is  as  iconoclastic  as  the  rest. 
Intolerant  as  he  is  of  doubt  as  to  the  identity  of  Shake- 
speare, he,  too,  denies  his  unity.  To  him,  Shakespeare  is 
a  noun  of  multitude,  signifying  many.  He  attributes 
one  of  the  most  striking  scenes  in  Macbeth  to  a  hack  of 
the  theatre;  he  suggests  that  the  third  and  fifth  acts  of 
Timon  were  the  work  of  a  colleague  with  whom  Shake- 
speare worked  in  collaboration;  he  holds  that  the  vision 
of  Posthumus  in  Cymbeline  is  a  piece  of  pitiful  mummery, 
which  must  have  been  supplied  by  another  hand;  and 
boldly  carrying  the  judgment  of  Solomon  into  execution, 
he  cuts  the  body  of  Henry  the  Eighth  in  two,  and  hands 
one  half  of  it  to  Shakespeare  and  the  other  half  to  Fletcher. 

"As  the  work  of  Shakespeare  is  said  to  have  been 
interpolated  by  others,  so  the  work  of  others  is  said  to 
have   been  appropriated   by   Shakespeare.     The   Hamlet 


184  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE, 

mentioned  by  Nash  in  1589  is  attributed  by  Mr.  Lee  to 
Kyd;  the  King  John  which  was  pubhshed  in  1590  is 
regarded  by  Mr.  Marshall  as  an  old  play  by  an  unknown 
writer;  the  Henry  the  Sixth,  mentioned  by  Henslowe  as 
performed  in  1591,  is  described  by  Mr.  Marshall  as  an  old 
play  which  Shakespeare  fomid  at  the  theatre  and  slightly 
altered;  the  First  part  of  the  Contention,  which  was 
published  in  1594,  and  the  True  Tragedy  of  Richard 
Duke  of  York,  which  was  published  in  1595,  Mr.  Boas 
tells  us,  are  considered  by  eminent  critics  as  plays  in  the 
composition  of  which  Shakespeare  took  no  part;  and  the 
Taming  of  a  Shrew,  which  was  published  in  1594,  is 
regarded  by  Mr.  Swinburne  as  the  work  of  an  author  as 
nameless  as  the  deed  of  the  witches  in  Macbeth.  And 
yet  Mr.  Lee  admits  that  Shakespeare  drew  largely  on  the 
Hamlet  which  he  has  attributed  to  Kyd;  Mr.  Marshall 
acknowledges  that  Shakespeare  was  indebted  for  the 
materials  of  his  play  to  the  King  John  of  the  unknown 
writer;  the  old  play,  Henry  the  Sixth,  appears  in  the 
Folio  as  the  work  of  Shakespeare;  Mr.  Boas  confesses 
that  Shakespeare  transferred  some  three  thousand  two 
hundred  and  fifty  lines,  with  little  or  no  alteration,  from 
the  Contention  and  the  True  Tragedy  to  his  Lancastrian 
Trilogy;  and  Mr.  Swinburne  recognizes  the  fact  that  in 
the  Taming  of  the  Shrew  all  the  force  and  humor,  alike 
of  character  and  situation,  belong  to  Shakespeare's  eclipsed 
and  forlorn  precursor;  that  he  tempered  and  enriched 
everything  in  his  precursor's  play,  but  in  reality  he 
added  nothing." 

All  these  statements  and  opinions  of  commentators 
tend  to  show  that  it  is  absolutely  silly  and  absurd  to 
^.redit  one  man  with  the  authorship  of  the  Shakespeare 


SHAKSPER  COULD  NOT  HAVE  WRITTEN  THE  PLAYS.     185 

plays.  If  nothing  else  would  be  a  bar,  the  fact  that 
man's  capacity  in  the  use  of  words  is  limited  to  less  than 
ten  thousand  words  is  a  sufficient  answer  to  the  Shaksper 
claim  or  the  Baconian  claim  or  the  claim  for  any  other 
individual  poet  to  the  composition  of  the  plays.  The 
solution  of  the  question  of  the  true  authorship  is  to  be 
found  in  collaboration  as  to  a  majority  of  the  plays,  and 
the  original  composition  of  the  play  was  very  often  supple- 
mented by  a  revision.  The  reader  will  find  that  Henry 
the  Fifth,  Hamlet,  Romeo  and  Juliet,  and  the  Merry 
Wives  of  Windsor  were  so  revised. 

In  the  first  edition  of  Henry  the  Fifth  there  were  only 
eighteen  hundred  lines.  Some  one  revised  it  before  the 
Folio  of  1623  was  issued,  by  the  addition  of  seventeen 
hundred  more  lines.  In  his  notice  of  the  revision  of  that 
play.  Knight  says,  ''In  this  elaboration  the  old  materials 
are  very  carefully  used  up;  but  they  are  so  thoroughly 
refitted  and  dovetailed  with  what  is  new  that  the  opera- 
tion can  only  be  compared  to  the  work  of  a  skillful  archi- 
tect, who  having  an  ancient  mansion  to  enlarge  and 
beautify  with  a  strict  regard  to  its  original  character, 
preserves  every  feature  of  the  structure  under  other 
combinations,  with  such  marvelous  skill  that  no  unity  of 
principle  is  violated;  and  the  whole  has  the  effect  of  a 
restoration  in  which  the  new  and  the  old  are  undistin- 
guishable." 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

THE  LEARNING  OF  THE  AUTHOR  OR  AUTHORS  OF  THE  POEMS 

AND    PLAYS. 

"  ril  talk  a  word  with  this  same  learned  Theban." 

— King  Lear,  iii,  4. 

Was  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  and  poems  a 
man  of  great  or  httle  learning?  Or  if  there  were  two  or 
more  authors,  were  they  learned  or  unlearned?  Every 
careful  reader  is  entitled  to  an  opinion  of  his  own  on  that 
point,  without  the  aid  of  critics  or  commentators;  and  I 
venture  to  say  that  the  person  who  will  read  the  Shake- 
speare plays  and  poems  without  consulting  the  commen- 
tators will  call  the  writer  or  writers  of  them  very  learned 
unless  he  believes  that  he  or  they  were  gifted  with  super- 
natural powers.  Let  me  make  a  broader  assertion.  If 
the  poems  of  Venus  and  Adonis  and  Tarquin  and  Lucrece 
and  the  plays  we  are  considering  (divested  of  all  reference 
to  William  Shaksper)  could  be  put  into  the  hands  of  a 
thorough  scholar  who  had  never  before  seen  them  or  heard 
either  of  them  or  their  reputed  author,  and  if  he  were 
asked  to  read  them  carefully,  and  after  such  reading  to 
give  an  opinion  as  to  whether  the  chief  composer  of  the 
plays  and  poems  was  a  learned  or  an  unlearned  man,  I 
am  quite  sure  that  he  would  say  that  the  author  of  the 
poems  and  plays  was  a  very  learned  person,  and  I  think 
that  my  readers  will  agree  with  me. 

Nevertheless,  if  the  disinterested  reader  whom  I  have 
selected  as  above,  after  reading  the  poems  and  plays 
without  previously  knowing  anything  whatever  of  the  life- 


THE  LEARNING  OF  THE  AUTHOR  OF  THE  PLAYS.  187 

histon'  of  William  Shaksper  of  Stratford-on-Avon,  the 
reputed  author,  will  seek  for  a  confirmation  of  his  opinion 
among  the  writings  of  the  essayists  and  commentators, 
he  will  be  sorely  bewildered. 

Ben  Johnson  said  of  the  reputed  writer  of  the  plays, 
"Though  thou  hadst  small  Latin  and  less  Greek,"  and 
Digges,  a  contemporary,  said,  "Nature  only  helped  him." 
Denham  assures  us  that  "all  he  had  was  from  old  mother 
wit."  Milton  talks  of  his  "Native  wood  notes  wild." 
Dryden  said  that  "he  wanted  not  the  spectacle  of  books 
to  read  nature."  Fuller,  on  whom  the  Shaksperites  rely, 
declares  positively  that  "his  learning  was  very  little. 
Nature  was  all  the  art  used  upon  him,  as  he  himself,  if 
alive,  would  confess."  The  learned  Dr.  Farmer  wrote  a 
book  to  show  that  Shaksper  was  not  a  learned  man. 
Langbaine  said  that  "  he  was  as  much  a  stranger  to  French 
as  Latin."  Hume,  in  his  "History  of  England,"  speaks  of 
Shaksper  as  an  author  "without  any  instruction  either 
from  the  world  or  from  books."  Sunpson  wrote  that  "the 
constant  criticism  which  his  contemporaries  from  Greene 
to  Ben  Jonson  passed  on  him  was  that  he  was  ignorant 
of  language  and  no  scholar."  Richard  Grant  White  called 
him  "the  untaught  son  of  a  Stratford  yeoman,"  while 
Alexander  Pope  said  that  "he  is  the  only  author  that 
gives  ground  for  a  new  opinion  that  the  philosopher  and 
even  the  man  of  the  world  may  be  born  as  well  as  the 
poet."  John  Dennis  declared  that  "he  who  allows 
Shakespeare  had  learning  and  a  familiar  acquaintance 
with  the  ancients,  ought  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  detractor 
from  the  glory  of  Great  Britain."  Bentham  stated  in  his 
book  on  English  schools  and  churches,  published  about 
the  year  1686,  that  "the  learning  of  Shaksper  was  very 


188  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

little,  and  therefore  it  is  more  a  matter  for  wonder  that 
he  should  be  a  very  excellent  poet." 

On  the  other  hand,  Mary  Cowden  Clark  says  that  "  the 
Venus  and  Adonis  bears  palpable  tokens  of  college  educa- 
tion and  predilection,  both  in  story  and  treatment."  The 
erudite  Reed  pronounces  it  "a  product  of  the  highest 
culture,  written  throughout  in  the  purest,  most  elegant 
and  scholarly  English  of  that  day."  Gildon,  the  well- 
known  editor  of  the  poem,  said  "  that  the  man  who  doubts 
of  the  learning  of  Shakespeare  hath  none  of  his  own." 
Mr.  Theobald  is  "very  unwilling  to  allow  him  so  poor  a 
scholar  as  many  have  labored  to  represent  him."  Mr. 
Upton  wonders  "with  what  kind  of  reasoning  any  one 
could  be  so  far  imposed  upon  as  to  imagine  that  Shake- 
speare had  no  learning."  Dr.  Grey  declared  that  "Shake- 
speare's knowledge  in  the  Greek  and  Latin  tongues  can 
not  reasonably  be  questioned."  Holmes  says  that  "the 
writer  of  the  plays  was  a  classical  scholar."  Rowe  found 
traces  in  him  of  the  Electra  of  Sophocles;  Coleman,  of 
Ovid;  Pope,  of  Dares  Phrygius  and  other  Greek  authors; 
Farmer,  of  Horace  and  Virgil;  Malone,  of  Lucretius, 
Statins,  Catullus,  Seneca,  Sophocles,  and  Euripides; 
Steevens,  of  Plautus;  Knight,  of  the  Antigone  of  Sophocles; 
and  White  of  the  Alcestis  of  Euripides. 

Donnelly  unhesitatingly  affirmed  that  "the  author  of 
the  plays  was  unquestionably  a  profound  scholar  and  a 
most  laborious  student.  He  had  read  in  their  own  tongues 
all  the  great  and  some  of  the  obscure  writers  of  antiquity; 
he  was  familiar  with  the  languages  of  the  principal  nations 
of  Europe;  his  mind  had  compassed  all  the  learning  of 
his  time  and  of  preceding  ages;  he  had  pored  over  the 
pages  of  French  and  Italian  novelists;  he  had  read  the 


THE    LEARNING    OF   THE    AUTHOR   OF    THE    PLAYS.      189 

philosophical  utterances  of  the  great  thinkers  of  Greece 
and  Rome;  and  he  had  closely  considered  the  narrations 
of  the  explorers  who  were  laying  bare  the  secrets  of  new 
islands  and  continents.  It  has  been  justly  said  that  the 
plays  could  not  have  been  written  without  a  library,  and 
can  not  to-day  be  properly  studied  without  one.  To  their 
proper  elucidation,  the  learning  of  the  whole  world  is 
necessary.  Goethe  says  of  the  writer  of  the  plays,  'he 
drew  a  sponge  over  the  table  of  human  knowledge.'" 
Books  after  books  have  been  written  to  show  that  the 
writer  of  the  plays  excelled  in  a  knowledge  of  astronomy, 
botany,  chemistry,  entomology,  geology,  medicine,  law, 
theology,  and  philosophy.  ''The  man  who  wrote  these 
plays  made  no  mistakes  as  to  his  law,"  says  Lord  Chief 
Justice  Campbell.  He  was  skilled  in  medicine  and  surgery, 
according  to  Bucknill  in  his  work  on  Shakespeare's  medical 
knowledge.  He  knew  about  the  circulation  of  the  blood 
before  Harvey.  He  knew  about  the  laws  of  gravitation 
before  Newton.  "He  was  the  prophet  of  geology,"  says 
Fullom.  He  was  an  accurate  botanist.  He  was  a  natural- 
ist and  entomologist,  according  to  Patterson.  He  was  a 
profound  biblical  student,  according  to  Wadsworth  and 
Vincent.  He  was  deeply  learned  in  history  and  mythol- 
ogy; and  finance  was  to  him  as  an  unsealed  book.  And 
above  all,  he  was  a  very  practical  philosopher.  All  these 
specialties,  if  these  writers  are  to  be  trusted,  must  have 
required  much  study,  much  aptitude  and  very  much 
training. 

I  think,  and  I  believe  that  the  reader  thinks  and  be- 
lieves with  me,  that  the  writer  of  the  poems  and  the 
principal  writer  of  the  plays  was  a  learned,  a  very  learned 
person. 


190  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

In  his  "  Myth,"  a  book  which  ought  to  be  read  by  every 
Shakespearean  student,  Morgan  very  strikingly  calls  atten- 
tion to  the  learning  of  the  dramatist:  "...  there  are  two 
characteristics  of  the  Shakespearean  works  which,  under 
the  calmest  and  most  sternly  judicial  treatment  to  which 
they  could  possibly  be  subjected,  are  so  prominent  as  to 
be  beyond  gainsay  or  neglect.  These  two  characteristics 
are — 1.  The  encyclopaedic  universality  of  their  informa- 
tion as  to  matters  of  fact;  and,  2.  The  scholarly  refine- 
ment of  the  style  displayed  in  them.  Their  claim  to 
eloquence  and  beauty  of  expression,  after  all,  is  a  question 
of  taste;  and  we  may  conceive  of  whole  peoples — as,  for 
example,  the  Zulus  or  the  Ashantees — impervious  to  any 
admiration  for  the  Shakespearean  plays  on  that  account. 
But  this  familiarity  with  what,  at  their  date,  was  the 
Past  of  history,  and — up  to  that  date — the  closed  book 
of  past  human  discovery  and  research  which  we  call 
Learning,  is  an  open  and  indisputable  fact;  and  the  New 
Zealander  who  will  sit  on  a  broken  arch  of  London  Bridge 
and  muse  over  the  ruins  of  British  civilization,  if  he  carry 
his  researches  back  to  the  Shakespearean  literature,  will  be 
obliged  to  find  that  its  writer  was  in  perfect  possession 
of  the  scholarship  antecedent  to  his  own  date,  and  of  the 
accumulated  learning  of  the  world  down  to  his  own  actual 
day." 

Of  the  writer  of  the  two  poems  and  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream,  I  can  say  with  Emerson  that  "he  sits 
above  the  hundred-handed  play  of  his  imagination,  pen- 
sive and  conscious." 

And  because  I  so  believe,  I  can  not  fit  the  man  William 
Shaksper,  as  his  life-history  truly  paints  him,  to  the  poetry 
which  passes  under  his  name. 


THE    LEARNING    OF   THE    AUTHOR    OF   THE    FLAYS.      191 

When  I  read  the  true  Ufe-history  of  WiUiam  Shaksper 
of  Stratford-on-Avon,  I  find  it,  as  O'Connor  describes  it, 
"a  record  unadorned  by  a  single  excellence  or  virtue. 
Before  it,  thoughtful  men  stand  in  utter  perplexity.  Hal- 
lam,  an  elegant  and  judicious  mind,  regards  it  with  petu- 
lant disquietude.  Guizot,  a  profound  and  penetrating 
intellect,  notes  it  with  a  certain  mystified  curiosity.  Cole- 
ridge recoils  from  it  with  anger  and  disgust,  and  declares 
that  such  a  creature  could  not  have  written  the  drama. 
'Does  God  choose  idiots  to  convey  truths  to  man!'  he 
€ries  with  indignation.  You  would  say  that  he  glared  at 
the  indisputable  biography,  enraged  that  'it  does  not 
offer  one  single  point  of  correspondence,  however  small, 
with  the  spirit  of  the  plays.'  " 

When  the  disinterested  reader  who  is  desirous  to  find 
the  real  truth  as  to  the  life  of  William  Shaksper,  now 
buried  under  the  accumulated  rubbish  of  two  centuries 
or  more  of  conjecture  and  invention,  has  cleared  away 
the  disgusting  mass,  he  must  inevitably  conclude  that 
whether  one  man  or  several  men  wrote  the  plays,  William 
Shaksper  was  too  illiterate  to  have  been  such  author  or  a 
participant  in  their  composition. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

THE    DIVERSE    SPELLING   OF   THE   NAMES. 

"Exceedingly  well   read,  and  profited 
In  strange  concealments." 

—First  Henry  IV.  iii,  1. 

Before  proceeding  to  an  examination  of  the  plays  and 
poems,  it  may  be  profitable  to  the  reader,  in  forming  an 
opinion  as  to  the  authorship,  to  consider  the  fact  that  the 
man  of  Stratford-on-Avon  never  spelled  his  own  name  in 
the  way  the  surname  appeared  on  the  title  pages  of  the 
various  publications,  viz.,  Shake-speare,  Shakespeare,  and 
Shakspeare.  If  the  reader  should  have  "Smith"  for  a 
surname,  and  he  should  be  written  about  as  "Smythe," 
he  would  naturally  and  rightly  presume  that  the  person 
so  writing  was  not  very  intimately  acquainted  with  him. 
Benjamin  Jonson  was  a  voluminous  writer  of  plays  and 
poems,  and  yet  no  educated  intimate  friend  ever  wrote 
to  him  or  about  him  as  "Johnson,"  although  the  insertion 
of  an  "h"  would  have  been  a  very  pardonable  mistake 
in  the  case  of  a  stranger.  I  had  to  use,  as  to  Jonson,  the 
word  "educated,"  for  I  find  that  the  ignorant  Henslowe 
wrote  of  him  twice  as  follows:  at  page  80  of  the  Diary, 
"  R'd  of  Bengemene  Johnsones  share  as  follows  28  of  July 
1597,"  and  at  page  256  he  wrote,  "Lent  unto  Bengemyne 
Johnson,"  etc.  Drayton's  name  was  never  written 
"Dreyton"  or  "Draton"  by  his  associates;  and  no  very 
intimate  friend  made  any  mistake  as  to  Chapman,  Chettle, 
Fletcher,  Marston,  or  Middleton.  If  we  should  read  com- 
mendations in  verse  or  prose  by  contemporaries  of  Dryden, 
Cowper,  Addison,  Gladstone,  Dickens,  or  Tennyson,  and 


THE   DIVERSE   SPELLINGS   OF   THE   NAME.  193 

the  name  of  the  commended  writer  should  be  spelled  by 
the  commender  as  "Driden,"  or  "Couper,'  or  "Adison," 
or  "  Gladestone,"  or  "Dikkens,"  or  "Tenison,"  while  we 
might  admire  the  commendatory  verses,  we  should  natur- 
ally presume  and  believe  that  the  authors  were  not  per- 
sonally acquainted  with  the  men  whom  they  praised,  or 
if  acquainted,  not  very  familiarly.  Any  author,  honestly 
desiring  to  eulogize  a  contemporary  writer,  living  or  dead, 
by  means  of  a  poem  or  prose  writing,  would  be  very  care- 
ful to  properly  spell  the  name  of  the  person  to  be  eulogized. 

In  this  matter  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  and  poems, 
while  it  is  not  very  important  if  William  Shaksper  of  Strat- 
ford-on-Avon  did  not  write  them,  to  ascertain  whether 
Shaksper  or  some  one  else  was  pointed  at  by  other  writers 
as  Shakespeare  or  Shake-speare,  yet  the  inquiry  may 
serve  as  an  aid  in  elucidating  the  truth  as  to  their  author- 
ship. Taking  for  granted,  therefore,  that  the  Shaksper 
of  Stratford  did  not  write  the  plays  and  poems,  the  reader 
should  have  before  him  the  statements  of  writers  of  that 
era.  And  first  in  order  comes  Francis  Meres,  who,  in 
1598,  in  his  "Palladis  Tamia,"  wrote  as  follows:  "As 
Plautus  and  Seneca  are  accounted  the  best  for  comedy 
and  tragedy  among  the  Latines;  so  Shakespeare,  among 
ye  English,  is  the  most  excellent  in  both  kinds  for  the  stage. 
For  comedy,  witnes  his  Gentleme  of  Verona,  his  Errors, 
his  Love's  Labor's  Lost,  his  Love's  Labor's  Wonne,  his 
Midsummer  Night's  Dreame,  and  his  Merchant  of  Venice; 
for  tragedy,  his  Richard  the  2,  Richard  the  3,  Henry  the 
4,  King  John,  Titus  Andronicus,  and  his  Romeo  and 
Juliet." 

Thomas  He5^wood  may  be  properly  called  next  as  a 
witness.     He  was  not,  like  Ben  Jonson,  a  man  who  would 


194  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

resort  to  flattery  or  fawning;  neither  would  he  be  disposed 
to  knowingly  exalt  an  ignoramus  to  the  position  of  a  great 
poet,  and  this  is  what  he  wrote  in  his  "  Hierarchie  of  the 
Blessed  AngeUs,"  published  in  1635: 

"  Mellifluous  Shake-speare,  whose  enchanting  quill 
Commanded  mirth  or  passion,  was  but  Will; 
And  famous  Jonson,  though  his  learned  pen 
Be  dipt  in  Castaly,  is  still  but  Ben. 
Fletcher  and  Webster,  of  that  learned  packe 
None  of  the  mean'st,  yet  neither  was  but  Jacke. 
Deckers  but  Tom,  no  Mav  nor  Middleton; 
And  hee's  now  but  Jacke  Foord  that  once  was  John." 

It  will  be  noticed  by  the  reader  that  Heywood  hyphen- 
ates the  word  we  are  investigating,  so  that  it  is  written 
in  his  book  as  "Shake-speare." 

John  Webster  is  the  next  witness,  and  this  slow  but 
surely  great  \sTiter  was  not  trying  to  deceive  anybody 
when,  in  the  year  1612,  in  his  labored  and  careful  intro- 
duction to  the  play  of  the  ''^Miite  De\al,"  he  penned  the 
following : 

"Detraction  is  the  sworn  friend  to  ignorance;  for  mine 
OTSTi  part,  I  have  ever  truly  cherished  my  good  opinion  of 
other  men's  worthy  labours:  especially  of  that  fuU  and 
heightened  style  of  Master  Chapman;  the  laboured  and 
understanding  works  of  Master  Jonson;  the  no  less  worthy 
composures  of  the  both  worthily  excellent  Master  Beau- 
mont and  Master  Fletcher;  and  lastly  (without  wrong 
last  to  be  named),  the  right  happy  and  copious  industry 
of  Master  Shakespeare,  Master  Dekker,  and  Master  Hey- 
wood; wishing  what  I  wTite  may  be  read  by  their  light: 
protesting  that,  in  the  strength  of  mine  own  judgment,  I 


THE   DIVERSE    SPELLINGS   OF   THE   NAME.  195 

know  them  so  worthy,  that  though  I  rest  silent  in  my 
own  work,  yet  to  most  of  theirs  I  dare  (without  flattery) 
fix  that  of  Martial, 

'  Non  norunt  haec  monumenta  mori.'  " 

This  introduction  was  slowly  and  dispassionately 
penned.  There  is  no  humor  about  it,  nor  is  there  any 
attempt  in  the  composition  to  deceive  or  cajole  the  reader. 
He  deservedly  and  truthfully  lauds  Chapman,  Jonson, 
Beaumont,  Fletcher,  Dekker,  Heywood,  and  with  the  two 
last  named  ''the  right  happy  and  copious  industry  of 
Master  Shakespeare."  No  attempt  is  made  to  use  the 
name  of  this  industrious  Shakespeare  for  any  purpose  of 
gain ;  and  the  compliment  to  all  the  poets  named  is  unques- 
tionably written  in  sincerity.  As  in  the  matter  of  Hey- 
wood's  allusion  heretofore  quoted,  it  will  be  noticed  that 
he  calls  the  writer  "Shakespeare"  not  ''Shaksper,"  and 
it  is  worthy  of  notice  that  Webster,  like  Heywood,  entirely 
omits  Michael  Drayton. 

Let  the  reader  now  notice  what  is  said  of  a  poet  Shake- 
speare by  Michael  Drayton  himself.  I  quote  from  his 
elegy  in  the  shape  of  a  poem  descriptive  of  poets  and  poesy 
to  his  most  dearly  beloved  friend,  Henry  Reynolds: 

"  Neat  Marlowe,  bathed  in  the  Thespian  springs. 
Had  in  him  those  brave  translunary  things 
That  the  first  poets  had,  his  raptures  were 
All  air  and  fire,  which  made  his  verses  clear; 
For  that  fine  madness  still  he  did  retain 
^Vhich  rightly  should  possess  a  poet's  brain. 
And  surely  Nash,  though  he  a  proser  were, 
A  branch  of  laurel  yet  deserves  to  bear, 
Sharply  satiric  was  he,  and  that  way 


196  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

He  went,  since  that  his  being  to  this  day 
Few  have  attempted,  and  I  surely  think 
Those  words  shall  hardly  be  set  down  with  ink 
Shall  scorch  and  blast  so  as  his  could,  where  he 
Would  inflict  vengeance;  and  be  it  said  of  thee, 
Shakespeare,  thou  hadst  as  smooth  a  comic  vein. 
Fitting  the  sock,  and  in  thy  natural  brain 
As  strong  conception  and  as  clear  a  rage. 
As  any  one  that  traflficked  with  the  stage." 

It  is  evident  that,  unless  Drayton  was  speaking  of  him- 
self in  the  way  of  an  aside  by  using  the  expression  ''And 
be  it  said  of  thee,"  he  was  eulogizing  a  person  who  was 
called  by  the  name  of  Shakespeare  and  recognized  as  a  poet. 

Richard  Barnfield  also,  in  his  "  Remembrance  of  Some 
English  Poets,"  published  in  1598,  mentions  Shakespeare 
in  the  following  poem  which,  for  the  reader's  convenience,, 
is  here  inserted  in  full : 

"  Live  Spenser  in  thy  Fairy  Queen ; 
Whose  like  (for  deep  conceit)  was  never  seen. 
Crowned  mayst  thou  be,  unto  thy  more  renown, 
(As  king  of  poets)  with  a  laurel  crown. 

And  Daniel  praised  for  thy  sweet  chaste  verse. 
Whose  fame  is  grav'd  on  Rosamond's  black  hearse; 
Still  mayst  thou  live  and  still  be  honored, 
For  that  rare  work,  the  "White  rose  and  the  Red. 

And  Drayton,  whose  well  written  tragedies. 
And  sweet  epistles  soar  thy  fame  to  skies : 
Thy  learned  name  is  equal  with  the  rest. 
Whose  stately  numbers  are  so  well  addrest. 

And  Shakspear,  thou  whose  honey-flowing  verse, 
(Pleasing  the  world)  thy  praises  doth  contain. 


THE    DIVERSE    SPELLINGS    OF   THE    NAME.  197 

Whose  Venus  and  whose  Lucrece  (sweet  and  chaste) 
Thy  name  in  fame's  immortal  book  have  plac'd 
Live  ever  you,  at  least  in  fame  live  ever; 
Well  may  the  body  die,  but  fame  die  never." 

The  reading  world  is  familiar  with  what  Ben  Jonson 
wrote  of  Shakespeare,  as  published  in  the  Folio  of  1623, 
but  it  is  not  so  familiar  with  what  Ben  said  of  him  in  his 
Conversations  with  Drummond  and  his  Discoveries. 
What  he  said  to  Drummond  is  as  follows: 
"He  said  Shakspere  wanted  art,  and  sometimes  sense, 
for,  in  one  of  his  plays,  he  brought  in  a  number  of  men, 
saying  they  had  suffered  shipwTeck  in  Bohemia,  where  is 
no  sea  near  by  a  hundred  miles." 

What  he  wrote  in  his  Discoveries,  is  as  follows: 
"  De  Shakspere  nostrat. — Augustus  in  Hat. — I  remember, 
the  pla5^ers  have  often  mentioned  it  as  an  honor  to  Shak- 
speare,  that  in  his  writing  (whatsoever  he  penned)  he  never 
blotted  out  a  line.  My  answer  hath  been.  Would  he  had 
blotted  a  thousand.  Wliich  they  thought  a  malevolent 
speech.  I  had  not  told  posterity  this,  but  for  their  igno- 
rance, who  chose  that  circmnstance  to  commend  their 
friend  by,  wherein  he  most  faulted;  and  to  justify  mine 
own  candor:  for  I  loved  the  man,  and  do  honor  his  mem- 
ory, on  this  side  idolatry,  as  much  as  any.  He  was  (indeed) 
honest,  and  of  an  open  and  free  nature;  had  an  excellent 
phantasy,  brave  notions,  and  gentle  expressions;  wherein 
he  flowed  with  that  facility,  that  sometimes  it  was  neces- 
sary he  should  be  stopped :  Sufflaminandus  erat,  as  Augus- 
tus said  of  Haterius.  His  wit  was  in  his  own  power, 
would  the  rule  of  it  had  been  so  too.  Many  times  he  fell 
into  those  things,  could  not  escape  laughter;  as  when  he 
said  in  the  person  of  Caesar,  one  speaking  to  him,  '  Caesar, 


198  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

thou  dost  me  wrong.'  He  replied, '  Caesar  did  never  wrong 
but  with  just  cause,'  and  such  Hke;  which  were  ridiculous. 
But  he  redeemed  his  vices  with  his  virtues.  There  was 
ever  more  in  him  to  be  praised  than  to  be  pardoned." 
In  this  statement  he  asserted  that  Shakespeare  wanted 
art  and  sometimes  sense.  To  say  that  a  man  lacks  sense 
is  very  uncomplimentary,  but  to  say  at  one  time  that  he 
lacked  art  and  at  another  time, 

"Thy  art. 
My  gentle  Shakespeare,  must  enjoy  a  part, 
For  though  the  poet's  matter,  nature  be. 
His  art  doth  give  the  fashion," 

is  certainly  very  contradictory,  and  makes  Jonson  a  very 
unreliable  eulogist.  Perhaps  I  may  be  wrong,  but  I  have 
sometimes  wondered  whether  it  was  really  meant  for  a 
compliment  to  call  Shaksper  a  swan — "The  sweet  swan 
of  Avon."  A  swan  never  sings  at  all  and  it  is  only  in  the 
imagination  of  poets  that  he  sings  in  his  dying  hours. 
Thus  in  Othello,  Act  5,  Scene  2,  Emilia  says,  "I  will  play 
the  swan  and  die  in  music."  And  in  the  Merchant  of 
Venice,  Act  3,  Scene  2,  Portia  says,  "He  makes  a  swan- 
like end,  fading  in  music." 

However  that  may  be,  the  reader  who  will  examine 
the  First  Folio  will  note  that  Jonson  spells  the  name  of  the 
reputed  poet  as  "Shakespeare."  It  is  also  so  spelled  in 
the  dedication  and  preface  of  that  book.  Hugh  Holland 
spells  it  as  "Shakespeare."  Leonard  Digges  spells  it  as 
"Shakespeare"  and  " Shake-speare, "  and  I.  M.  calls  him 
"Shake-speare." 

While  of  course  it  is  not  very  important  in  the  attempt 
at  an  elucidation  of  the  authorship  of  the  Shakespeare 


THE    DIVERSE    SPELLINGS   OF   THE   NAME.  199 

plays  that  the  questions  hereinafter  propounded  should  be 
satisfactorily  answered,  yet  I  have  marshaled  the  state- 
ments of  these  great  contemporary  dramatists  so  that  the 
reader  will  be  aided  to  a  reasonable  conclusion  as  to  who 
or  what  was  meant  by  the  constant  use,  by  printers,  of 
the  word  "Shakespeare"  as  the  name  of  a  play -writer. 
And  the  several  questions  which  I  propound  are  these: 

If  it  be  taken  for  granted,  as  a  proved  and  accepted 
fact,  that  William  Shaksper  of  Stratford-on-Avon,  by 
reason  of  his  ignorance,  did  not  and  could  not  write  the 
plays  attributed  to  him,  several  questions  confront  the 
reader,  and  the  first  one  is :  Was  there  in  England  during 
the  years  from  1593  to  1616,  and  later,  a  poet  who  was 
familiarly  called  and  recognized  as  William  Shakespeare 
or  Shake-speare?  There  is  nothing  unusual  about  this. 
It  is  so  in  every  nation  where  writers  abound.  The 
English  Winston  Churchill  has  just  done  the  same  to  avoid 
confusion  with  the  American  Churchill.  I  copy  the  follow- 
ing from  a  leading  newspaper:  "Winston  Churchill,  the 
son  of  Lady  Randolph  Churchill,  in  order  to  avoid  having 
his  books  confused  with  those  of  Winston  Churchill,  the 
American,  and  author  of  'Richard  Carvel,'  will,  in  future, 
have  his  name  on  title  pages  read:  'Winston  Spencer- 
Churchill.'" 

Again,  secondly,  if  it  be  taken  for  granted  as  a  proved 
and  accepted  fact,  that  William  Shaksper  of  Stratford-on- 
Avon,  by  reason  of  his  ignorance,  did  not  and  could  not 
write  the  plays  now  attributed  to  him,  was  there  in  Eng- 
land during  the  period  above  named,  a  concealed  poet, 
who  wrote  or  revised  the  plays  in  part  or  all,  or  who 
inserted  in  all  or  in  a  part  of  them  the  magnificent  and 
sparkling  poetical  gems,   culled  and  gathered  from  art, 


200  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

from  nature,  from  history,  from  philosophy,  from  science, 
and  from  ancient  lore,  which  have  always  captivated  and 
enchanted  and  will  forever  captivate  and  enchant  the 
reading  world? 

Again,  if  the  inability  of  Shaksper,  as  aforesaid,  be 
taken  for  granted  as  a  proved  and  accepted  fact,  was  the 
appellation  "William  Shakespeare"  merely  assumed  and 
used  by  the  printers  and  publishers,  with  or  without 
special  reference  to  the  Stratford  man? 

My  conjecture  is,  and  it  is  only  a  conjecture,  that  the 
second  question  should  be  answered  in  the  affirmative, 
and  that  this  concealed  writer,  whoever  he  was,  used 
William  Shaksper  as  his  mask,  and  that  whether  this  con- 
cealed poet  wrote  all  or  a  part  only  of  the  plays,  he  induced 
Shaksper  to  appear  as  the  author  or  reviser  and  to  claim 
and  obtain  all  the  credit  arising  from  the  production  and 
popularity  of  the  plays.  To  safely  act  such  a  part,  Shak- 
sper must  have  been  very  reserved  and  distant,  and  this 
may  account  for  the  unfamiliarity  of  writers  with  his  name. 

I  have  purposely  called  this  chapter  one  of  conjecture, 
because  there  are  no  fixed  facts  which  can  be  relied  upon 
to  answer  the  foregoing  questions  satisfactorily.  I  was 
at  one  time  surprised  to  find  that  such  an  anagram  as 
"Thomas  Dekker's  Speaker,"  would  directly  lead  to  the 
words  "Shakespeare's  Tom  Dekker,"  but  the  reader  and 
I  are  not  trusting  to  nor  relying  upon  anagrams  or  ciphers, 
but  cold  facts. 

Some  propositions  may  be  stated  here  to  which  I  think 
every  intelligent  and  disinterested  reader  will  give  his 
assent. 

If  Francis  Bacon  wrote  any  or  part  of  any  of  the  Shake- 
.speare  plays,  so  called,  it  was  necessary  that  the  fact  of 


THE    DIVERSE    SPELLINGS    OF   THE    NAME.  201 

his  authorship  should  be  concealed  as  much  as  possible 
from  the  play-writers  and  actors  who  wrote  for  or  were 
employed  by  the  theatrical  managers  of  that  era,  except 
such  favored  and  trusted  ones  as  Bacon  could  rely  upon. 
If  confided  to  the  play -writers  or  actors  generally,  it  would 
have  soon  been  known  to  the  Court  and  also  in  the  city 
of  London  and  throughout  England. 

Again,  if  Francis  Bacon  was  a  concealed  dramatist  as 
well  as  a  concealed  poet,  and  if  he  wrote  any  or  part  of 
the  plays  above  specified,  and  if  he  induced  William 
Shaksper,  an  ignorant  man,  to  father  them  as  his  own, 
then,  unless  Shaksper  kept  aloof,  so  far  as  social  inter- 
course was  concerned,  from  the  band  of  tragic  and  comic 
writers,  such  as  Draj^ton,  Dekker,  Chettle,  Middleton, 
and  others  who  flourished  at  that  time,  his  ignorance 
would  have  been,  sooner  or  later,  made  manifest  to  them 
or  some  of  them,  and  such  commendatory  expressions, 
as  I  have  above  set  out,  would  never  have  been  written. 

Perhaps  the  last  proposition  could  be  better  put  thus: 
If  Shaksper,  an  ignorant  person,  presented  to  the  public, 
as  his  own,  plays  which  Bacon  wrote,  then  Shaksper's 
fraudulent  conduct  would  presumably  have  become  known 
to  the  play  writers  above  specified  or  some  of  them,  if  he 
associated  with  them  familiarl5^  Of  course,  the  reader  is 
acquainted  with  Fuller's  fancj^  picture  of  Shaksper  and 
Ben  Jonson  at  the  Mitre  Tavern.  I  call  it  a  picture  of 
fancy,  because  Fuller  was  only  eight  years  old  when 
Shaksper  died,  and  the  use  of  the  word  "behold"  shows 
that  he  was  romancing.     This  is  what  he  said  in  1662: 

"Many  were  the  wit-combats  betwixt  him  and  Ben 
Jonson;  which  two  I  behold  like  a  Spanish  great  galleon 
and  an  English  man-of-war.     Master  Jonson,  like  the  for- 


202  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

mer,  was  built  far  higher  in  learning;  solid  but  slow  in 
performance.  Shakspeare,  with  the  English  man-of-war, 
lesser  in  bulk,  but  lighter  in  sailing,  could  turn  with  all 
tides,  tack  about,  and  take  advantage  of  all  winds,  by  the 
quickness  of  his  wit  and  invention." 

That  brings  me  to  the  third  proposition,  which  may 
be  briefly  stated  thus:  If  Francis  Bacon  was  a  concealed 
dramatist,  as  well  as  a  concealed  poet,  and  if  he  wrote 
any  or  a  part  of  the  plays  popularly  called  the  Shake- 
speare plays,  and  if  he  permitted  Shaksper  to  present  them 
to  the  public  and  to  receive  the  credit  for  them,  as  their 
author,  the  fact  of  such  authorship,  such  concealment, 
and  such  user  of  Shaksper  as  Bacon's  mask,  must  have 
been  confidentially  imparted  to  and  known  by  Ben  Jonson, 
since  in  no  other  way  can  his  laudatory  and  commenda- 
tory utterances  and  his  conduct  be  explained. 

In  the  Morgan-Platt  debate.  New  Shakespeareana, 
April  and  July,  1903,  Mr.  Morgan  has  very  clearly  shown 
that  the  name  "Shakespeare"  was  variously  spelled  by 
publishers  and  others  in  Shaksper 's  time.  He  is  right  in 
asserting  that  there  is  nothing  unusual  as  to  that.  But 
what  would  he  say  as  to  the  wrong  spelling  of  his  own 
name  by  an  intimate  and  well-educated  friend?  Or  what 
would  he  expect  other  people  to  say  of  a  man  who  pro- 
fessed to  be  Appleton  Morgan,  if  the  man  should  present 
a  card  on  which  he  had  written  the  name  thus,  ''Apelton 
Morgon,"  and  if  asked  to  write  it  again,  he  should  write 
"  Apleton  Maurgon"?  Ought  not  such  a  man  to  be  justly 
branded  as  an  impostor?  Would  any  scholar,  acquainted 
with  such  a  fact,  recognize  him  as  the  real  Appleton 
Morgan?  It  seems  to  me  that  a  learned  man  ought  to 
know  how  to  spell  his  own  name  correctly.     If  in  the 


THE    DIVERSE    SPELLINGS    OF   THE    NAME.  203 

latter  half  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  a  gentlemanly  look- 
ing man  had  introduced  himself  to  the  literary  world  as 
Mr.  Thackeray,  the  great  English  writer,  and  had  handed 
to  any  scholar  his  card  reading  thus,  "  William  Makepiece 
Thackaray,"  the  reader  of  the  card  would  have  regarded 
him  as  an  impostor  and  cheat.  Again,  if  in  the  present 
year  a  woman  should  appear  in  New  York  City,  styling 
herself  "Marie  Corelli"  and  claiming  to  be  the  great 
writer  who  bears  that  name,  and  if  on  being  asked  by  a 
reporter  for  a  leading  new^spaper  of  that  city  to  present 
him  with  her  autograph,  she  should  write  her  name  as 
"Maria  Correli,"  the  reporter  would  know  at  once  that  the 
woman  was  a  fraud. 

Because  the  man  of  Stratford-on-Avon  wrote  his  name 
thus,  "Shaksper,"  I  have  called  him  "Shaksper"  in  these 
chapters. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

FLOUNDERING  IN  THE  BROAD  HIGHWAY  OF  THE  PLAYS. 

"  Thou  hast  lost  thy  labor." 

—The  Winter's  Tale,  iv,  4. 

I  started  out  in  my  examination  of  the  plays  after  a 
great  deal  of  what  I  thought  was  very  careful  preparation. 
First  of  all,  I  made  a  written  list  of  the  names  of  all  the 
English  writers  of  the  Shaksper  period  of  whom  I  could 
find  any  mention,  which  list  I  kept  always  before  me 
during  my  examination  of  the  text.  These  were :  William 
Alabaster,  William  Alexander,  Robert  Armin,  Francis 
Bacon,  William  Barksdale,  Richard  Barnfield,  Francis 
Beaumont,  Samuel  Brandon,  Nicholas  Breton,  Anthony 
Brewer,  Richard  Brome,  William  Browne,  George  Chap- 
man, Henry  Chettle,  Robert  Daborne,  Samuel  Daniel, 
John  Day,  Thomas  Dekker,  Michael  Drayton,  Thomas 
Drue,  Richard  Eads,  John  Fletcher,  Phineas  Fletcher, 
Nathaniel  Field,  John  Ford,  Abraham  Fraunce,  Ulpian 
Fulwell,  William  Gager,  Thomas  Garter,  Robert  Greene, 
Fulke  Greville,  Richard  Hathaway,  William  Haughton, 
Thomas  Heywood,  Ben  Jonson,  Thomas  Kyd,  Thomas 
Legg,  Thomas  Lodge,  John  Lyly,  David  Mallet,  Gervase 
Markham,  Christopher  Marlowe,  John  Marston,  Philip 
Massuiger,  Thomas  Middleton,  Anthony  Monday,  Thomas 
Nash,  Thomas  Newton,  Richard  Niccols,  George  Peele, 
Henry  Porter,  Thomas  Preston,  Samuel  Rowley,  William 
Rowley,  James  Shirley,  Martin  Slater,  Wentworth  Smyth, 
John  Still,  John  Taylor,  Robert  Taylor,  Cyril  Tourneur, 
Thomas  Watson,  John  Webster,  Robert  Wilson,  Henry 
Wotton,  and  Robert  Yarrington. 


FLOUNDERING  IN  THE  BROAD  HIGHWAY  OF  THE  PLAYS.  205 

I  determined  that  I  would  be  unbiased  and  unpreju- 
diced while  conducting  the  wearisome  examination,  but 
I  must  confess  that  at  first  I  could  not  eliminate  from  my 
mind  a  natural  feeling  in  favor  of  Francis  Bacon.  That 
arose  in  this  way:  I  had  been  selected  a  few  years  ago, 
without  pre\^ous  consultation,  by  the  noted  Amaranth 
Club,  a  select  literary  organization  of  women  whose  polite 
requests  on  literary  topics  could  not  be  refused,  to  take 
the  position  and  make  the  attempt  to  show  that  Bacon 
was  the  author  of  the  plays.  Of  course  I  consented  and 
made  the  best  argument  I  could  in  his  favor — an  argument 
founded  upon  the  authority  of  Morgan's  "Shakespearean 
Myth"  and  Holmes'  "Authorship  of  Shakespeare";  and 
naturally  enough,  for  a  time  I  was  inclined  to  espouse  the 
Baconian  theory.  But  while  recognizing  the  bias  occa- 
sioned by  this  cursory  examination  and  necessary  reliance 
jyro  tempore  upon  the  arguments  of  others,  I  have  subjected 
Bacon's  works  to  the  same  crucial  test  that  I  applied  to 
the  others  whose  writings  I  felt  it  necessarj'  to  examine. 

I  will  now  explain  the  nature  of  the  tests.  Henry 
Ward  Beecher,  in  one  of  his  sermons,  expressed  much  better 
than  I  can  the  difference,  intellectually  speaking,  between 
men.  This  is  what  he  said:  ''Johnson  is  never  mistaken 
for  Burke.  The  way  of  their  words  is  so  different.  No 
one  could  confound  Webster  in  his  gigantic  speeches  and 
Emerson  in  the  stringed  pearls  of  his  style.  This  is  recog- 
nition of  interior  personality,  which  is  far  more  indi\adual 
than  anything  corporeal.  Plato  is  dead,  but  Plato's 
writings  exist  and  Plato  exists  from  them,  and  there  is  a 
living  Plato  and  a  living  Socrates.  Thus  we  have  person- 
ality as  determined  by  matter  and  personality  as  deter- 
mined bv  mind." 


206  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Let  US  now  try  Emerson  and  Webster  in  this  matter 
of  personality  as  determined  by  mind.  Speaking  of 
the  Bunker  Hill  Monument,  Webster  said:  "We  wish 
finally  that  the  last  object  to  the  sight  of  him  who  leaves 
his  native  shore,  and  the  first  to  gladden  him  who  may 
re-visit  it,  may  be  something  which  shall  remind  him  of 
the  liberty  and  glory  of  his  country.  Let  it  rise!  Let  it 
rise  till  it  meet  the  sun  in  his  coming;  let  the  earliest 
light  of  the  morning  gild  it  and  parting  day  linger  and 
play  on  its  summit." 

Now  contrast  Emerson:  "Through  the  thickest  under- 
standing will  reason  throw  itself  instantly  into  relation 
with  the  truth,  that  is  its  object,  whenever  that  appears. 
But  how  seldom  is  the  pure  loadstone  produced!  Faith 
and  love  are  apt  to  be  spasmodic  in  the  best  minds.  Men 
live  on  the  brink  of  mysteries  and  harmonies  into  which 
yet  they  never  enter,  and  with  their  hand  on  the  door 
latch,  they  die  outside." 

Here,  now,  is  a  sample  of  Carlyle:  "That  such  and  such 
a  one,  who  filled  the  whole  earth  with  his  hammering  and 
troweling  and  would  not  let  a  man  pass  for  his  rubbish, 
turns  out  to  have  built  of  mere  coagulated  froth,  and 
vanishes  with  his  edifice,  traceless,  silently  or  amid  hoot- 
ings  illimitable." 

^Vho  but  Carlyle  could  have  written  such  a  sentence 
as  that? 

The  style  of  Hawthorne,  an  inimitable  master  of  lucid 
and  pleasing  detail,  is  easily  recognizable:  "Half-way 
down  a  by-street  of  one  of  our  New  England  towns,  stands 
a  rusty  wooden  house  with  seven  acutely-peaked  gables, 
facing  towards  various  points  of  the  compass,  and  a  huge 
clustered  chimney  in  the  midst." 


FLOUNDERING  IN  THE  BROAD  HIGHWAY  OF  THE  PLAYS.  207 

An  extract  from  Henry  Clay  will  show  the  difference 
between  his  style  and  that  of  Webster.  He  was  speaking 
for  the  recognition  of  the  independence  of  the  South 
American  republics.  ''With  regard  to  their  superstition, 
they  worship  the  same  God  with  us.  Their  prayers  are 
offered  up  in  their  temples  to  the  same  Redeemer,  whose 
intercession  we  expect  to  save  us.  All  religions  united 
with  government  are  more  or  less  inimical  to  liberty.  All 
separated  from  government  are  compatible  with  liberty." 

I  cite  next  and  lastly  an  extract  from  the  writings  of  a 
famous  editor,  statesman,  and  orator,  Henry  Watterson, 
whose  style  is  familiar  to  American  readers,  and  yet  very 
hard  to  imitate:  ''Tried  by  this  standard,  where  shall 
we  find  an  example  so  impressive  as  Abraham  Lincoln, 
whose  career  might  be  chanted  by  a  Greek  chorus  as  at 
once  the  prelude  and  epilogue  of  the  most  imperial  theme 
of  modern  times?  Born  as  lowly  as  the  son  of  God,  in  a 
hovel;  reared  in  penury,  squalor,  with  no  gleam  of  light 
or  fair  surrounding;  without  graces,  actual  or  acquired; 
without  name  or  fame  or  official  training;  it  was  reserved 
for  this  strange  being,  late  in  life,  to  be  snatched  from 
obscurity,  raised  to  supreme  command  at  a  supreme 
moment,  and  entrusted  with  the  destiny  of  a  nation." 

These  quotations  are  made  to  illustrate  the  intellectual 
individuality  or  separation  of  each  writer  or  orator.  In 
your  library,  reader,  you  have,  I  shall  suppose,  the  works 
of  Scott,  Thackeray,  Dickens,  George  Eliot,  Wallace, 
Lever,  Trollope,  Hugo,  Balzac,  Dumas,  or  Kipling.  Ex- 
amine, if  you  please,  their  books  at  any  page,  and  you  will 
notice  what  Beecher  calls  the  intellectual  individuality 
of  each.  Dickens  repeats  himself  in  each  of  his  novels, 
and  so  do  all  the  others. 


208  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

There  are  other  characteristics  of  writers  and  speakers 
which  all  who  have  carefully  studied  the  subject  will 
acknowledge.  One, is  based  on  the  limitation  of  the 
number  of  words  used.  An  orator  may  talk  very  fast  and 
very  long.  A  writer  may  compose  as  many  novels  as 
Cooper  did,  but  each  speaker  and  each  writer  has  only  a 
limited  command  of  words.  That  limit  controls  him,  no 
matter  how  many  times  he  uses  the  combinations  of  these 
words.  He  travels  in  a  certain  circuit,  and  can  not  get 
out  of  the  verbal  rut. 

There  is  also,  as  to  orators  and  writers,  the  character- 
istic of  sameness  and  repetition.  Each  one  has  his  favor- 
ite words,  sentences,  and  expressions,  which  he  repeats 
again  and  again  with  very  little  change  at  any  time.  By 
these  characteristics  they  can  generally  be  recognized  and 
identified.  Every  writer,  from  Virgil  down  to  Mark  Twain, 
has  his  limit  of  words,  his  favorite  phrase  reproductions, 
and  his  repetitions,  natural  or  dressed.  And  then,  too, 
in  general  no  two  writers  or  speakers  who  write  or  speak 
much  use  the  same  words  and  phrases.  Such  similarity 
would  be  exceptional.  I  would  rather,  for  instance, 
study  and  trace  out  the  resemblance  in  the  styles  and 
turns  of  expression  between  Sir  Philip  Francis  and  Junius 
than  depend  upon  a  comparison  of  their  handwriting. 
A  man's  writing  may  be  disguised,  but  the  modes  of 
expression,  the  favorite  and  peculiar  phrases  and  the 
repetitions  are  almost  infallible  guides  to  authorship, 
where  the  writing  is  not  the  work  of  collaborators. 

I  started  out,  therefore,  on  an  examination  of  the  plays 
with  the  determination  to  compare  the  words,  phrases, 
sentences,  and  peculiar  expressions  found  in  them  with 
those  of  the  scholars  and  writers  of  the  Shaksper  period. 


FLOUNDERING  IN  THE  BROAD  HIGHWAY  OF  THE  PLAYS.  209 

It  is,  of  course,  a  hard  and  tedious  work  to  make  and 
apply  the  test  of  word  and  phrase  limitation  to  the  dis- 
covery of  a  concealed  writer ;  and  the  details  of  the  process, 
however  sure  the  result  may  be,  will  naturally  be  dry  and 
uninteresting  to  the  general  reader.  It  did  not  take  me 
long,  after  I  started  on  the  road,  to  discover  that  I  might 
safely  eliminate  from  the  list  of  probable  authors  of  the 
poems  and  plays  all  except  Francis  Bacon,  Henry  Chettle, 
Samuel  Daniel,  Thomas  Dekker,  Michael  Drayton,  John 
Fletcher,  Richard  Hathaway,  William  Haughton,  Thomas 
Heywood,  Ben  Jonson,  Thomas  Kyd,  John  Marston, 
Thomas  Middleton,  Anthony  Monday,  Henry  Porter, 
Went  worth  Smyth,  John  Webster,  and  Robert  Wilson. 
The  list,  therefore,  narrowed  down  to  a  select  few,  eighteen 
in  number.  Among  these  eighteen  men,  the  true  William 
Shakespeare  and  the  writer  or  writers  of  the  plays  will  be 
found  by  the  diligent  and  painstaking  student  of  English 
literature. 

I  began  by  making  an  alphabetical  index  of  the  familiar 
phrases  and  turns  of  expression  used  in  each  play,  expect- 
ing, by  comparing  these  phrases  with  the  writings  of  con- 
temporaries above  named,  to  ferret  out  the  true  author. 
I  had  not  taken  into  account,  when  I  began,  the  inexor- 
able fact  that  it  is  utterly  impossible  for  one  man,  whose 
life-span  scarcely  ever  exceeds  seventy  years,  to  use 
twenty-one  thousand  words.  So,  when  I  found  myself, 
for  instance,  assured  of  the  fact  that  I  had  unearthed 
in  a  particular  play  the  words  and  phrases  of  Michael 
Drayton,  I  would  be  confronted  in  the  very  same  play 
with  the  peculiar  phrases  and  expressions  of  Thomas 
Dekker.  And  so  I  floundered  in  the  broad  highway, 
because  of  the  fact  of  collaboration.     Wherever  a  Shake- 


210  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

speare  play  is  a  composite  production,  trouble — and  a  great 
deal  of  trouble — comes,  and  is  bound  to  come,  to  the  deciph- 
erer of  authorship.  In  the  five  acts  of  any  play,  or  in  any 
play  without  numbered  acts,  composed  by  collaborators, 
the  student  will  find  a  mixture  of  expressions,  phrases, 
word  and  sentence  peculiarities  which  will  greatly  puzzle 
and  perplex  him.  The  plays  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher 
illustrate  this  difficulty.  It  is  hard  to  tell  where  Beau- 
mont ends  or  Fletcher  begins  and  vice  versa.  When  the 
bookseller,  Moseley,  issued  an  edition  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  after  Fletcher's  death  in  1625,  Aubrey  addressed 
to  Moseley  the  following  complaint,  intended  to  be  poetical, 
about  the  book : 

"  In  the  large  book  of  plays,  you  late  did  print 
In  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  name,  why  in't 
Did  you  not  justice  give  to  each  his  due? 
For  Beaumont  of  those  many  writ  but  few; 
And  Massinger  in  other  few ;  the  main 
Being  sweet  issues  of  sweet  Fletcher's  brain. 
But  how  came  I,  you  ask,  so  much  to  know, 
Fletcher's  chief  bosom  friend  informed  me  so." 

Another  difficulty  presented  itself,  which  rendered 
progress  hard,  and  that  was  the  additional  fact  of  revision 
or  change  made  necessary  from  time  to  time  after  the  play 
was  written,  either  to  suit  the  taste  of  the  theatre-goers 
or  the  fastidious  taste  of  the  composer.  The  dresser  of 
plays,  as  Ben  Jonson  styles  him,  employed  by  the  man- 
ager, had  much  to  do  in  the  way  of  altering,  reconstruct- 
ing, and  amending.  Henslowe's  Diary  shows  that  con- 
clusively. If  the  receipts  of  the  theatre  did  not  come  up 
to  Henslowe's  expectation,  or  if  the  audience  showed  dis- 
pleasure at  the  rendition  of  any  particular  part  of  the  play, 


FLOUNDERING  IN  THE  BROAD  HIGHWAY  OF  THE  PLAYS.  211 

or  if  it  appeared  to  need  an  improvement  to  catch  the 
ears  of  the  groundUngs,  the  reviser  was  called  upon  at 
once  to  make  the  necessary  additions,  eliminations,  or 
amendments. 

With  a  knowledge  of  these  facts  and  difficulties,  acquired 
after  months  and  months  of  toil  in  the  broad  road  of  the 
plays,  I  found  it  necessary  to  leave  that  road,  and  to  start 
afresh  on  the  pathway  of  the  poems. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

THE  SONNETS  DO  NOT  LEAD  TO  THE  TRUE  SHAKESPEARE. 

"/  had  rather  than  forty  shillings  I  had  my  hook  of  songs^ 
and  sonnets  here." 

— Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  i,  1. 

As  I  desire  to  take  the  reader  with  me  in  the  search 
for  the  real  Shakespeare,  I  have  blazed  for  him  one  path 
which  may  lead  to  the  true  goal.  I  call  it  the  pathway 
of  the  poems.  The  Venus  and  Adonis  and  the  Tarquin 
and  Lucrece  constitute  that  pathway,  and  the  dedications 
with  the  argument  annexed  to  Tarquin  and  Lucrece  form 
an  auxiliary  path. 

When  I  began  my  explorations  in  that  path,  I  started 
with  an  investigation  of  the  Areopagus  literary  club  which 
was  composed  of  a  select  few  of  English  scholars,  and 
which,  as  will  be  noticed,  was  very  careless  as  to  the  pres- 
ervation of  the  product  of  the  talent  and  labors  of  its 
members.  If  that  club  had  made  and  enforced  a  rule  that 
all  poems  and  plays  of  its  members  should  be  safely  pre- 
served and  kept  by  some  authorized  custodian  for  future 
use,  reference,  or  publication,  much,  very  much  would 
have  been  gained  to  English  literature,  and  many  of  the 
great  poems  and  plays  of  its  members,  which  circulated 
in  society  after  the  authors  were  dead,  would  have  been 
saved  from  destruction,  and  when  published,  credited  to 
the  real  authors  by  the  publishers,  who  in  Elizabeth's  day 
were  rather  piratical. 

The  Areopagus  Club,  I  quote  from  Bourne,  "was  a 
club  started  before  1579;  composed  mainly  of  courtiers,. 


SONNETS  DO  NOT  LEAD  TO  TRUE  SHAKESPEARE.  213 

who  aspired  to  be  also  men  of  letters,  apparently  with 
Sir  Philip  Sidney  as  its  president,  to  which  were  admitted 
other  men  of  letters,  among  others  Spenser  in  particular, 
who  hardly  aspired  to  rank  with  the  courtiers."  It  seems 
to  have  had  Gabriel  Harvey  as  a  corresponding  member 
and  counselor  in  chief.  Among  its  exercises  we  may 
reckon  Sidney's  ''Lady  of  May"  produced  in  1578.  Dyer 
and  Greville  were  evidently  busy  members.  Though  very 
little  of  his  writing  survives.  Dyer  was  accounted  a  great 
poet  in  his  time,  and  the  tragedies  by  Greville,  which  are 
extant,  were,  as  he  tells  us,  written  in  his  younger  days 
when  Sidney  was  his  associate  in  literary  pursuits.  "Who 
were  the  other  members  of  the  club  we  know  not,  but  it 
started  out  with  the  idea  of  establishing  classical  forms  in 
English  verse  writing.  Spenser,  it  seems,  composed  poems 
and  dramas  which  are  either  lost  or  appropriated  by  some 
one  under  other  titles.  Among  these  I  will  mention  The 
Dying  Pelican,  a  large  work  finished  and  ready  for  the 
press  in  1580,  The  Dreams,  and  The  Stemmata  Dudleiana, 
as  to  which  he  said,  "I  never  did  better."  It  is  a  fact  not 
generally  known  that  Spenser  wrote  nine  comedies  which 
have  never  appeared,  at  least  under  his  name;  and  yet 
Harvey,  to  whom  he  sent  them  together  with  the  Fairy 
Queen  for  review  and  criticism,  and  who  was  a  splendid 
judge  of  a  good  poem  or  play,  declared  that  these  nine 
comedies  were  better  than  the  Fairy  Queen,  a  work  which 
the  student  of  English  literature  well  knows  ranks  by 
universal  consent  with  the  ^Eneid,  the  Canterbury  Tales, 
and  the  Paradise  Lost.  Harvey  wrote  to  Spenser  thus: 
"To  be  plain,  I  am  void  of  all  judgment,  if  your  nine 
comedies  come  not  nearer  Ariosto's  comedies  either  for 
the   fineness   of  plausible   execution   or   the   rareness   of 


214  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

poetical  invention  than  the  Elvish  Queen  doth  to  his 
Orlando  Furioso." 

Unable  to  find  the  lost  comedies  or  other  writings  of 
the  members  of  the  Areopagus  Club,  I  turned  to  the  poems. 
By  the  poems,  I  mean  the  Shake-speare  Sonnets,  theVeims 
and  Adonis,  and  the  Tarquin  and  Lucrece. 

The  diligent  reader  will  wonder  why  I  have  left  out  the 
Shake-speare  Sonnets,  so  called,  from  the  list  of  pathways 
which  lead  toward  the  real  author  or  authors  of  the  plays; 
and  therefore  it  is  eminently  proper  that  I  should  explain 
clearly  why  the  Sonnets  do  not  so  lead,  and  as  I  myself 
started  first  on  that  supposed  pathway,  the  consideration 
of  the  authorship  of  the  Sonnets  will  receive  immediate 
attention.  I  will  try  to  make  the  reasons  for  my  declara- 
tion of  the  name  of  the  true  author  as  clear  and  interesting 
to  the  studious  reader  as  possible. 

In  the  year  1609,  a  book  appeared  in  England  called 
"  Shake-speare's  Sonnets  never  before  imprinted."  The 
word  "Shake"  and  the  suffix  ''speare"  were  hyphenated, 
thereby  distinguishing  the  hyphenated  words  from  the 
surname  ''Shaksper."  Mr.  William  Shaksper,  the  reputed 
author  of  the  plays  and  poems,  was  living  at  that  time, 
and  he  lived  for  more  than  six  years  thereafter,  and  he 
did  not,  so  far  as  the  world  knows,  either  before  or  after 
the  publication  of  the  Sonnets,  claim  to  be  the  maker, 
begetter,  furnisher,  or  author  of  them  or  any  of  them;  he 
did  not  take  them  to  the  publisher;  he  did  not  enter  the 
book  in  the  register  of  the  Stationers'  Company;  he  did 
not  spell  his  name  in  the  hyphenated  way,  and  he  did  not 
dedicate  the  Sonnets  to  any  one. 

There  was  a  dedication,  however,  on  a  separate  leaf, 
next  to  the  title  page,  in  the  following  words : 


SONNETS  DO  NOT  LEAD  TO  TRUE  SHAKESPEARE.  215 

"TO  .  THE  .  ONLIE  .  BEGETTER  .  OF  . 

THESE  .  INSUING  .  SONNETS  . 

MR  .  W  .  H  .  ALL  .  HAPPINESSE. 

ANB  .  THAT  .  ETERNITIE  . 

PROMISED  . 

BY  . 

OUR  .  EVER  .  LIVING  .  POET  . 

WISHETH  . 

THE  .  ^^^LL- WISHING  . 

ADVENTURER  .  IN  . 

SETTING  . 

FORTH  .  T  .  T  ." 

.\lthough  Shaksper  never  claimed  that  he  wrote  the 
Sonnets,  yet  on  account  of  the  sunilarity  m  name,  and  also 
for  the  reason  that  Francis  Meres,  in  1598,  alluded  to 
"  Shakespeare's  sugared  sonnets  among  his  private  friends," 
in  his  "'Palladis  Tamia,"  the  weight  of  pubHc  opinion  is 
now  on  the  side  of  the  claimants  for  Shaksper. 

But  because  of  the  very  natural  doubt  arising  from  the 
apparent  illiteracy  of  Shaksper  and  from  his  failure  to 
claim  or  acknowledge  the  Sonnets,  and  because  of  the 
further  important  fact  that  the  statements  and  references 
of  the  sonneteer  do  not  coincide  even  in  the  slightest 
detail  with  the  knowTi  and  undeniable  incidents  of  Shak- 
sper's  life,  and  because  also,  as  a  learned  writer  well  puts 
it,  ''while  accepting  the  Meres  mention  as  proof  of  the 
authorship  of  the  Sonnets,  aU  commentators,  living  and 
dead,  reject  the  Meres  list  of  plays,"  it  has  come  to  pass 
within  the  last  few  years  that  some  learned  students  of 
Elizabethan  literature  have  set  up  the  claims  of  other 
men  to  the  honor  of  the  authorship  of  the  Sonnets. 

This  is  a  step  in  the  right  direction,  for  if  William 
Shaksper  of  Stratford-on-Avon  did  not  write  the  Sonnets, 


216  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

the  literary  world  is  interested  in  knowing  who  did,  if 
such  knowledge  is  attainable.  An  examination  of  the 
many  books  written  on  the  subject  of  the  supposed  writer 
of  the  Sonnets  and  of  the  attempted  explanations  of  the 
meaning  set  out  in  them  (for  the  two  must  go  together) 
discloses  the  names  of  the  following  reputed  authors:  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh,  Francis  Bacon,  Anthony  Shirley,  and 
William  Shaksper. 

In  the  year  1838  Armitage  Brown  wrote  a  book  which 
contains  a  very  fair  dissection  of  the  Sonnets.  His  arrange- 
ment of  them  is  as  follows: 

Sonnets  1  to  26  inclusive  are  addressed  to  the  poet's 
friend,  persuading  him  to  marry. 

Sonnets  27  to  55  are  addressed  to  the  friend,  forgiving 
him  for  having  robbed  him  of  his  mistress. 

Sonnets  56  to  77  are  addressed  to  the  friend,  com- 
plaining of  his  coldness  and  warning  him  of  life's  decay. 

Sonnets  78  to  101  are  addressed  to  the  friend,  com- 
plaining that  he,  the  friend,  prefers  another  poet's  praises 
and  reproving  him  for  faults  that  may  injure  his  character. 

Sonnets  102  to  126  are  also  addressed  to  his  friend, 
excusing  himself  for  having  been  some  time  silent,  and 
disclaiming  the  charge  of  inconstancy. 

Sonnets  127  to  152  are  addressed  to  his  mistress  on  the 
subject  of  her  infidelity. 

Coleridge  concurs  in  the  foregoing  classification  of  the 
Sonnets.  This  division  will  enable  the  reader  to  study 
them  understandingly  if  he  so  desires. 

In  the  year  1797  Chalmers  endeavored  to  show  that 
the  Sonnets  were  addressed  to  Queen  Elizabeth.  Massey 
disposes  of  that  conjecture  very  summarily.  "Her 
majesty,"  he  states,  "must  have  been  sixty  years  of  age 


SONNETS  DO  NOT  LEAD  TO  TRUE  SHAKESPEARE.  217 

when  the  Sonnets  were  written.  He,  Chalmers,  argues 
that  Shakspeare,  knowing  the  voracity  of  Ehzabeth  for 
praise,  thought  he  would  fool  her  to  the  top  of  her  bent." 
Chalmers  could  produce  no  valid  argument  in  support  of 
his  conjecture. 

Coleridge  guessed  that  the  person  addressed  by  the 
poet  was  a  woman;  and  Knight  also  argued  that  portions 
of  the  Sonnets  were  addressed  to  a  female.  The  careful 
reader  will  find  the  position  of  Coleridge  untenable. 

Drake,  in  1817,  was  the  first  to  suggest  that  the  Sonnets 
were  addressed  to  Henry  Wriothesly,  Earl  of  Southamp- 
ton. Gerald  Massey's  book,  entitled  "  Shakspeare's  Son- 
nets never  before  interpreted,"  a  ponderous  work  of  six 
hundred  and  more  pages,  was  written  in  support  of  the 
Drake  theory. 

For  the  purpose  of  identifying  the  real  author  and 
getting  rid  of  the  false  and  unfounded  claim  of  the  reputed 
authors  above  named,  by  means  of  an  infallible  test  which 
the  Sonnets  themselves  provide,  I  now  set  out  at  length 
sonnets  numbered  twenty  (20),  seventy-six  (76),  and  one 
hundred  and  thirty-six  (136),  premising  that  the  true 
interpretation  of  these  three  sonnets  will  solve  the  mystery 
and  disclose  the  author. 

SONNET  20. 

"A  woman's  face,  with  nature's  own  hand  painted, 
Hast  thou,  the  master-mistress  of  my  passion; 
A  woman's  gentle  heart,  but  not  acquainted 
With  shifting  change,  as  is  false  women's  fashion : 
An  eye  more  bright  than  theirs,  less  false  in  rolling, 
Gilding  the  object  whereupon  it  gazeth; 
A  man  in  hue,  all  hues  in  his  controlling, 
W^ich  steals  men's  eyes,  and  women's  souls  amazeth ; 


218  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

And  for  a  woman  wert  thou  first  created; 
Till  nature  as  she  wTOught  thee,  fell  a-doting, 
And  by  addition  me  of  thee  defeated, 
By  adding  one  thing  to  my  purpose  nothing. 

But  since  she  pricked  thee  out  for  women's  pleasure; 

Mine  be  thy  love,  and  thy  love's  use  their  treasure." 

SONNET  76. 

"  Why  is  my  verse  so  barren  of  new  pride, 
So  far  from  variation  or  quick  change? 
Why,  with  the  time,  do  I  not  glance  aside 
To  new-found  methods  and  to  compounds  strange? 
Why  write  I  stOl  all  one,  ever  the  same, 
And  keep  invention  in  a  noted  weed 
That  every  word  doth  almost  tell  my  name, 
Showing  their  birth,  and  where  the}^  did  proceed? 
0 !  know,  sweet  love,  I  always  write  of  you, 
And  you  and  love  are  still  my  argument, 
So,  all  my  best  is  dressing  old  words  new. 
Spending  again  what  is  already  spent; 
For  as  the  sun  is  daily  new  and  old, 
So  is  my  love,  still  telling  what  is  told." 

SONNET  136. 

"If  thy  soul  check  thee  that  I  come  so  near, 
Swear  to  thy  blind  soul  that  I  was  thy  Will, 
And  will,  thy  soul  knows,  is  admitted  there ; 
Thus  far  for  love,  my  love-suit,  sweet,  fulfil. 
Will  will  fulfil  the  treasure  of  thy  love. 
Ay,  fill  it  full  with  wills,  and  my  w^ill  one. 
In  things  of  great  receipt  with  ease  we  prove, 
Among  a  number  one  is  reckon'd  none: 
Then,  in  the  number  let  me  pass  untold. 
Though  in  thy  store's  account  I  one  must  be; 
For  nothing  hold  me,  so  it  please  thee  hold 
That  nothing  me,  a  something  sweet  to  thee : 
Make  but  my  name  thy  love,  and  love  that  still. 
And  then  thou  lov'st  me, — for  my  name  is  Will.*' 


SONNETS  DO  NOT  LEAD  TO  TRUE  SHAKESPEARE.  219 

The  line  in  sonnet  twenty,  "A  man  in  hue,  all  hues  in 
his  controlling,"  is  undoubtedly  descriptive  of  the  friend 
and  not  of  the  pcet  himself. 

Sonnet  seventy-six  (76)  clearly  refers  to  the  poet  him- 
self, and  when  he  says  "  that  every  word  doth  almost  tell 
my  name,"  he  tells  the  reader  that  the  several  sonnets 
contain  a  clue  which,  if  rightly  followed,  will  lead  to  the 
discovery  of  his  name. 

Sonnet  one  hundred  and  thirty-six  (136)  in  the  last  two 
lines  furnishes  an  additional  means  of  identification,  for  it 
identifies  the  poet  by  the  name  with  which  he  was  famil- 
iarly addressed. 

The  claim  for  Raleigh  has  been  ingeniously  and  vigor- 
ously advocated  by  a  distinguished  Senator  from  Indiana, 
following  the  lead  of  the  late  William  D.  O'Connor  in  his 
"Hamlet's  Note  Book."  That  gifted  and  forcible  writer 
thought  that  the  author  as  indicated  by  the  words  "Mr. 
W.  H."  was  Walter  Raleigh,  the  W  being  the  initial  letter 
of  his  Christian  name  and  the  H  the  last  letter  of  his 
surname ;  and  he  insisted,  or  at  least  earnestly  suggested, 
that  the  Adventurer  "T.  T."  (the  first  and  last  letters 
being  similarly  used),  was  the  mathematician  Thomas 
Hariot,  who  was  Raleigh's  fast  friend  and  companion. 
Mr.  O'Connor  overlooked  the  fact  that  the  person  who 
subscribed  the  dedication  was  not  a  mysterious  or  con- 
cealed person  at  all,  but  a  printer  and  bookseller  of  con- 
siderable eminence  named  Thomas  Thorpe,  as  clearly 
appears  from  the  register  of  the  Stationers'  Company, 
where  the  entry  of  the  book  is  found  thus : 

"20  May,  1609" 
"Thomas  Thorpe,     a  book  called  Shake-speare's  Sonnets." 


220  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Mr.  O'Connor  himself  states  that  he  had  not  at  his 
command  "the  measured  leisure  necessary  to  establish 
these  assertions  beyond  cavil  and  to  spread  open  the 
meaning  of  the  Sonnets."  One  great  mistake  was  made 
by  him,  which  has  been  also  made  by  others,  in  supposing 
that  the  dedicatee,  "Mr.  W.  H."  was  any  one  else  than  the 
mere  procurer  or  furnisher  of  the  sonnets  to  the  publisher, 
Thorpe.  His  great  mistake  lies  in  the  construction  of  the 
Sonnets  as  being  principally  connected  with  the  personi- 
fication of  a  divine  purpose.  He  is  quite  right,  however, 
in  supposing  that  the  author  loved  outward  adornment; 
that  he  was  poor,  and  that  he  personally  knew  the  noble 
and  ardent  Giordano  Bruno,  but  neither  Mr.  O'Connor 
nor  any  other  advocate  of  Raleigh's  authorship  can  show 
that  he  had  a  friend  to  whom  the  words  of  the  seventh 
line  of  the  twentieth  sonnet  above  quoted  are  applicable. 
What  dear  friend  of  Raleigh's  was  "  a  man  in  hue,  all  hues 
in  his  controlling"?  Again,  it  is  impossible  to  show  the 
applicability  of  the  lines  of  the  seventy-sixth  sonnet  to 
Raleigh's  name.  What  word  in  the  sonnets,  frequently 
repeated,  represents  the  name  of  Raleigh?  Unless  such  a 
word  can  be  found,  it  would  be  futile  to  make  a  claim  in 
behalf  of  Raleigh.  So  also,  it  would  be  necessary  to  further 
show  that  Raleigh  was  called  "Will"  in  order  to  be  in 
accord  with  the  statement  in  Sonnet  136 : 

"And  then  thou  lov'st  me,  for  my  name  is  Will." 

Raleigh  was  never  called  Will. 

The  same  three  tests  will  apply  as  well  to  Sir  Francis 
Bacon  and  Anthony  Shirley.  What  friend  did  Bacon 
have  who  answers  the  description  of  the  writer's  friend 


SONNETS  DO  NOT  LEAD  TO  TRUE  SHAKESPEARE.  221 

in  the  twentieth  sonnet,  or  what  word,  iterated  and  re- 
iterated in  the  Sonnets,  tells  Bacon's  name?  Or  when 
was  Bacon  ever  called  Will  or  Willy? 

A  very  able  anonymous  writer,  calling  himself  a  grad- 
uate of  Cambridge,  has  undertaken  in  a  book  lately  pub- 
lished, entitled  "Is  it  Shakespeare?"  to  argue  that  Bacon 
was  the  author  of  the  Sonnets.  To  make  his  argument 
at  all  plausible,  he  is  forced  to  take  the  position  that  Bacon 
was  a  libertine  and  even  worse;  that  he  was  in  touch  with 
Queen  Elizabeth's  maids  of  honor,  and  very  full  of  "wild 
oats."  He  tries  to  account  for  the  Will  of  the  Sonnets  by 
guessing  that  the  reference  is  to  Will  Shaksper,  William 
Herbert,  and  Sir  William  Knollys.  He  calls  Knollys  a  new 
candidate  for  the  position,  but  not  one  of  his  introducing. 
The  reader  will  notice  that  his  theory  as  to  the  authorship 
of  the  Sonnets  is  all  furnished  out  of  conjecture,  in  imita- 
tion of  the  Shaksperite  biographers.  He  uses,  for  illus- 
tration of  his  methods,  such  phrases  as  these:  "Here  I 
contend  we  have."  "But  I  have  a  suggestion  to  make." 
"I  suggest  that."  "I  suggest  as  highly  probable  that." 
"  I  should  not  be  surprised  if. "  "  I  have  sometimes  thought 
that."  "There  seems  little  reason  to  doubt  that."  "My 
strong  impression  is."  That  is  the  very  system  of  the 
Shaksperites.  Besides  indulging  in  conjecture,  he  en- 
deavors to  divide  the  Sonnets  into  classes  to  suit  his  theory. 
He  asserts  that  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  Bacon  was 
the  author  of  Sonnet  151.  He  is  unable,  he  confesses,  to 
solve  the  enigma  of  the  dark  lady.  He  can  not  explain 
the  meaning  of  the  line  in  the  twentieth  Sonnet;  and  at 
last,  he  surmises  that  the  author  had  been  reading  the 
Arcadia  of  Sidney  and  that  he  had  extracted  much  of  the 
matter  of  the  first  thirteen  Sonnets  from  that  work.     "  It 


222  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

looks,"  he  says,  ''as  if  the  author  had  been  asked  to  try 
his  pupil  pen  in  tu'rning  Sidney's  prose  into  sonnets.  So 
many  and  close  are  the  parallels.  Sir  Walter  Scott  thought 
that  Sidney  must  have  read  the  Sonnets."  Here  he  was 
getting  very  near  to  the  truth — he  was  on  a  very  hot 
trail.  The  greatest  trouble  encountered  by  this  writer  is 
that  he  can  not  explain  "  how  every  word  doth  almost  tell 
my  name."  He  is  clearly  right  in  saying  that  the  way  to 
discover  the  chief  writer  of  the  plays  is  through  the  poems ; 
but  a  more  careful  examination  will  convince  this  brilliant 
writer  that  the  Sonnets  do  not  lead  to  a  discovery  of  any 
author  of  the  plays. 

Shirley's  claim  by  one  author  is  based  upon  the  refer- 
ence in  Sonnets  76,  105,  135,  and  136  to  the  words  "one" 
and  ''all  one"  as  if  they  pointed  to  the  ancient  seal  of  the 
Ferrers  family,  which  contained  the  arms  of  the  family 
upon  a  chimney  piece  with  the  motto  "only  one." 

The  sole  merit  in  the  argument  is  that  the  writer  has 
grasped  at  one  of  the  conceits  of  the  author  of  the  Sonnets, 
but  has  failed  to  fathom  its  meaning.  Beyond  this  con- 
ceit, no  valid  argument  can  be  adduced  in  support  of 
Shirley.  He  does  not  fit  the  tests  of  Sonnets  20,  76,  and 
136. 

But  did  Shaksper  write  the  Sonnets? 

To  show  that  he  did  not  write  them,  it  is  not  necessary 
to  rely  merely  upon  his  ignorance  and  consequent  inability. 
I  assert  that  upon  the  face  of  the  Sonnets  themselves,  the 
evidence  that  Shaksper  did  not  write  them  will  appear 
plainly  to  the  careful  and  disinterested  reader.  The 
first  twenty-six  sonnets  undoubtedly  refer  to  a  male 
friend  of  the  sonneteer;  and  the  friend  is  earnestly  en- 
treated   to    marry.     The   friend    was    beautiful;  he    was 


SONNETS  DO  NOT  LEAD  TO  TRUE  SHAKESPEARE.  223 

young;  he  had  a  beautiful  mother;  he  was  "a  man  in  hue, 
all  hues  in  his  controlling"  (whatever  that  may  mean),  as 
pictured  in  the  twentieth  sonnet,  and  he  was  very  much 
beloved  by  the  poet. 

Now  I  challenge  the  most  ardent,  enthusiastic,  and 
learned  admirer  of  William  Shaksper  to  point  to  any 
friend  of  his  who  will  answer  the  description  in  these 
twenty-six  sonnets,  or  whose  name  or  description  will 
correspond  with  the  peculiar  and  miquestionably  pun- 
ning designation  of  the  "man  in  hue"  in  the  twentieth 
sonnet. 

Mr.  Thomas  Tyler,  who,  with  the  aid  of  the  Rev.  W.  A. 
Harrison,  issued  a  carefully  prepared  and  annotated  edition 
of  the  Sonnets  in  1890,  has  attempted  to  bridge  over  this 
difficulty  by  guessing  blindly  and  boldly  that  the  friend 
was  the  Earl  of  Pembroke  and  the  Mr.  W.  H.  to  whom 
the  bookseller  Thorpe  dedicated  the  Sonnets.  It  is  both 
unreasonable  and  absurd  that  a  plain  man  of  the  com- 
monalty, one  of  the  lower  orders  in  England,  when  about 
to  publish  a  book  of  poems,  would  address  so  exalted  a 
personage  as  William  Herbert,  the  Earl  of  Pembroke  and 
Knight  of  the  Garter,  as  plain  ''Mr.  H."  In  the  days  of 
good  Queen  Bess,  the  title  of  "Right  Honorable"  would 
have  been  used  in  the  dedication  by  one  of  the  common- 
alty, and  especially  by  a  bookseller,  when  dedicating  a 
book  to  such  a  superior  in  rank  as  an  Earl.  This  Mr.  H. 
was  not  even  an  Esquire.  Titles  then,  as  now,  counted  for 
something  in  England.  When  Mr.  Tyler  alleges  that  the 
Earl  of  Pembroke  was  the  friend  of  Shaksper,  it  is  neces- 
sary for  him  to  give  some  reasonable  proof  that  he  knew 
Shaksper,  or,  if  he  knew  him,  that  he  liked  him  so  much 
that  he  was  willing  to  have  him  publicly  notice  his  licen- 


224  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

tious  doings,  and  it  is  also  necessary  for  him  to  identify 
him  as  "a  man  in  hue,  all  hues  in  his  controlling,"  and  that 
he  can  not  do. 

The  Tyler  hypothesis  is  founded  upon  five  conjectures 
or  guesses,  every  one  of  which  is  either  absurd,  improbable, 
or  unsupported  by  any  reliable  evidence. 

1.  That  the  Earl  of  Pembroke  was  the  Mr.  W.  H.  of 
Thorpe. 

2.  That  Mrs.  Mary  Fitton,  one  of  Queen  Elizabeth's 
maids  of  honor,  was  the  mistress  of  Shaksper,  and  was 
the  black-eyed  woman  alluded  to  in  the  127th  and  132d 
sonnets. 

3.  That  Shaksper  played  before  the  Queen. 

4.  That  Mrs.  Fitton  knew  him  and  thrust  herself  upon 
his  acquaintance  for  the  purpose  of  falling  in  love  with 
him. 

5.  That  Shaksper  knew  Pembroke  and  quarreled  with 
him  about  this  mistress  of  Shaksper. 

All  this  is  the  veriest  literary  and  causeless  abuse  of 
the  dead,  as  unsubstantial  ''as  the  baseless  fabric  of  a 
vision."     It  has  not  a  fact  to  support  it. 

To  show  the  reader  with  what  skill  Mr.  Tyler  has  con- 
cocted the  silly  fiction  about  Mrs.  Fitton,  I  quote  from 
Tyler's  "Shakespeare  Sonnets,"  page  76: 

"We  are  not  able  to  connect  Mrs.  Fitton  personally 
with  Shakespeare  by  proof  as  direct  as  that  which  in  the 
case  of  Herbert  is  furnished  by  the  dedication  of  the 
First  Folio." 

The  Rev.  W.  A.  Harrison,  however,  some  time  ago 
called  attention  to  evidence  which  brings  Mrs.  Fitton  into 
connection  with  a  member  of  Shakespeare's  Company, 
that  is,  the  Lord  Chamberlain's  Company,  leaving  it,  as 


SONNETS  DO  NOT  LEAD  TO  TRUE  SHAKESPEARE.  225 

Tyler  conjectures,  to  be  easily  inferred  that  she  must 
have  been  acquainted  with  the  members  of  the  Company 
generally,  and  especially  with  such  as  were  more  promi- 
nent. In  1600,  William  Kemp,  the  clown  in  the  company, 
dedicated  his  Nine  Days'  Wonder  to  "Mistress  Anne 
Fitton,  Mayde  of  honor  to  Most  Sacred  Mayde  Royal 
Queen  Elizabeth." 

Mr.  Harrison  certainly,  with  the  aid  of  Mr.  Tyler,  has 
produced  a  nine  days'  wonder. 

Because  Mr.  Kemp  dedicated  a  book  to  Mrs.  Fitton, 
"  it  is  easy  to  be  inferred,"  says  Tyler,  "  that  Mrs.  Fitton 
must  have  been  acquainted  with  the  members  of  the 
theatrical  company  to  which  Kemp  belonged,  and  espe- 
cially with  those  who  were  most  prominent;  and  that 
being  so  acquainted,  it  is  easily  to  be  inferred  that  this 
Mrs.  Fitton  should  seduce  or  be  seduced  by  the  man  of 
Stratford." 

Tyler  continues  thus  on  page  77:  "These  facts  are 
interesting  and  important,  and  even  taken  alone  they 
would  go  far  toward  removing  the  difficulty  which  might 
otherwise  be  felt  about  Shakespeare's  forming  a  connec- 
tion with  a  lady  of  so  high  a  rank  as  one  of  the  Queen's 
maids  of  honor." 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  fact  that  Kemp  dedicated  his 
book  to  Anne  Fitton  instead  of  a  Mary  Fitton  would 
naturally  indicate  that  even  if  he  intended  to  dedicate 
his  book  to  Mrs.  Mary  Fitton  he  was  so  little  acquainted 
with  a  lady  of  so  high  a  rank  as  one  of  Queen  Elizabeth's 
maids  of  honor  that  he  did  not  even  know  her  Chris- 
tian name.  He  certainly  did  not  get  the  name  right. 
And  that  thread  must  be  a  very  slender  thread  indeed, 
infinitesimally  so,   which  would  give  a  woman   of  high 


226  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

rank  an  acquaintanceship  with  all  the  members  of 
Kemp's  company  because,  forsooth,  she  happened  to 
know  one  of  them. 

Mr.  Tyler  became  a  little  despondent  and  shaky  as  to 
his  theory  about  the  attempted  identification  of  Mrs. 
Fitton  as  the  dark  lady  of  the  Sonnets,  and  he  is  com- 
pelled to  state  another  very  strong  objection  to  his  hy- 
pothesis.    At  page  77  of  his  work  on  the  Sonnets  he  says : 

"An  objection,  however,  to  identifying  Mrs.  Fitton 
with  the  lady  of  the  Sonnets  has  been  drawn  from  this 
very  dedication  of  Kemp's.  In  addressing  so  very  dark  a 
lady  as  the  lady  of  the  Sonnets  evidently  was,  would  Kemp 
have  dared  to  speak  so  disparagingly  as  he  does  of  'a 
Blackamoore?' — '  But,  in  a  word,  your  poore  seruant  offers 
the  truth  of  his  progresse  and  profit  to  your  honourable 
view;  receive  it,  I  beseech  you,  such  as  it  is,  rude  and 
plaine;  for  I  know  your  pure  iudgment  lookes  as  soone 
to  see  beauty  in  a  Blackamoore,  or  heare  smooth  speach 
from  a  Stammerer,  as  to  finde  any  thing  but  blunt  mirth 
in  a  Morrice  dauncer,  especially  such  a  one  as  Will  Kemp, 
that  hath  spent  his  life  in  mad  ligges  and  merry  iestes.' 
In  reply  to  the  objection  just  mentioned,  it  must  be 
observed  that  though  the  lady  of  the  Sonnets  is  spoken  of 
as  'black'  in  contrast  to  Elizabethan  fairness,  yet  it  is  by 
no  means  implied  that  her  skin  was  like  that  of  a  negro. 
No:  she  was  clearly  a  brunette:  her  complexion  was 
'dun'  (130,  line  3) — a  very  different  thing  indeed.  Then 
Kemp's  allusion  is  not  merely,  or  perhaps  mainly,  to  the 
colour  of  a  negro  or  '  blackamoore. '  Probably  he  was  think- 
ing more  of  the  features  and  modelling  of  the  face  of  a 
negro,  with  their  usual  unsightliness,  at  least  from  our 
point  of  view." 


SONNETS  DO  NOT  LEAD  TO  TRUE  SHAKESPEARE.  227 

Poor  Will  Shaksper!  Not  only  was  he  made  by  tradi- 
tion "William  the  Conqueror,"  but  he  is  made  by  Tyler 
a  prey  to  the  seductive  influences  of  "  so  very  dark  a  lady" 
that  it  is  a  question  whether  her  skin  was  like  that  of  a 
negro,  or  only  black  in  contrast  to  Elizabethan  fairness. 
Mr.  Tyler  is  not  willing  that  he  should  have  been  seduced 
by  a  "  blackamoore."  He  is  entirely  willing  that  he  should 
have  been  seduced,  however,  by  Mrs.  Fitton,  no  matter 
what  the  color  of  her  skin  might  have  been,  because  he  says 
at  page  78  that,  ''What  has  just  been  said  about  Kemp 
and  his  dedication  may  easily  suggest  that,  on  Shake- 
speare's Company  performing  at  Court,  Mrs.  Fitton  may 
have  become  interested  in  Shakespeare,  either  as  the 
author  of  the  play  or  otherwise,  and  so  have  introduced 
herself  to  him." 

Here,  now,  we  have  added  by  the  admirers  of  the 
gentle  Shaksper  to  the  story  of  his  impudent  licentious- 
ness in  connection  with  the  actor  Burbage,  the  story  of  an 
illicit  amour  of  Shaksper  with  the  dark-eyed  lady  of  the 
Sonnets,  founded  on  the  conjectured  acquaintance  of  the 
lady  with  another  actor,  Kemp.  Of  such  wretched  stuff 
our  knowledge  of  a  man  whom  they  worship  as  England's 
greatest  poet  is  fabricated! 

Worse  even  than  that  is  the  position  which  the  gentle 
Shaksper  is  made  to  occupy  by  the  adoption  of  the  Harrison 
and  Tyler  hypothesis.  He,  whether  the  seducer  of  Queen 
Elizabeth's  maid  of  honor  or  the  victim  of  her  wiles, 
writes,  according  to  Tyler  and  Harrison,  the  sugared  story 
of  the  amour  in  poetry  for  circulation  among  and  the  delec- 
tation of  his  private  and  particular  friends.  Not  content, 
however,  with  such  private  circulation  of  the  particulars  of 
his  lascivious  and  criminal  conduct  among  his  associates 


228  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

and  boon  companions,  he  then  suffers  Thomas  Thorpe,  the 
printer,  to  pubhsh  his  amorous  proceedings  for  the  benefit 
of  the  world  at  large  in  1609,  seven  years  before  his  death. 

The  Gerald  Massey  hypothesis,  which  is  only  formidable 
for  its  length,  is  more  becoming,  to  say  the  least  of  it. 
Massey  guesses  that  Shaksper  was  urging  the  Earl  of 
Southampton  to  get  married,  and  striving  to  make  him, 
Southampton,  immortal  by  means  of  the  Sonnets,  and  that 
Elizabeth  Vernon,  whom  the  Earl  married,  was  jealous  of 
the  dark-eyed  lady  of  the  Sonnets. 

Massey's  book  is  full  of  conjecture.  Absurdities  also 
characterize  it.  Thus,  for  instance,  referring  to  the  fact 
that  Southampton  was  released  from  imprisonment  after 
the  death  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  Massey  says  "We  may  rest 
assured  that  Shakspeare  was  one  of  the  first  to  greet  his 
'dear  boy,'  over  whose  errors  he  had  grieved  and  upon 
whose  imprudent  unselfishness  he  had  looked  with  tears, 
half  of  sorrow  and  half  of  pride.  He  had  loved  him  as  a 
father  loves  a  son;  he  had  warned  him  and  prayed  for 
him  and  fought  in  soul  against  fortune  on  his  behalf,  and 
he  now  welcomed  him  from  the  gloom  of  a  prison  on  his 
way  to  a  palace  and  the  smile  of  a  monarch.  This  was 
the  poet's  written  gratulation." 

The  reader  at  this  point  would  reasonably  expect  that 
the  "written  gratulation"  of  the  poet  would  be  in  the 
shape  of  a  delicate  note  or  an  epistle  of  some  sort,  but 
instead  of  that  Massey  audaciously  sets  out  the  one  hun- 
dred and  seventh  sonnet  as  the  gratulatory  writing,  quoting 
that  particular  sonnet  in  full  as  his  warrant  for  his  assur- 
ance of  the  truth  of  the  foregoing  statement,  and  forgetting 
or  ignoring  the  fact  that  the  Sonnets  were  written  before 
1598  and  that  Southampton  was  not  released  from  prison 


SONNETS  DO  NOT  LEAD  TO  TRUE  SHAKESPEARE.  229 

until  April  10,  1603.  The  reference  by  Meres  to  "Shake- 
speare's sugared  sonnets  among  his  private  friends"  the 
reader  will  remember  was  printed  in  1598,  nearly  five 
years  before  Southampton's  exit  from  confinement. 

The  hypothesis  of  Henry  Brown,  who  wrote  a  book 
about  the  Sonnets,  is  that  the  Sonnets  are  a  purposed 
imitation  of  the  extravagant  assertions  and  eccentric  love 
descriptions  of  the  Italian  and  English  sonneteers,  as  well 
as  a  satire  on  the  times. 

All  these  hj^potheses  ignore  the  primary  and  leading 
rule  of  construction  as  to  prose  and  poetry,  law  and  litera- 
ture, which  prevails  and  governs,  viz:  that  words  used 
must,  if  possible,  be  considered  in  their  literal  and  ordinary 
signification,  and  that  every  part  must  be  viewed  in  con- 
nection with  the  whole.  It  is  very  apparent  that  the 
writer  of  the  Sonnets  meant  in  the  76th  sonnet  to  state 
that  in  almost  every  sonnet  his  name  or  a  word  that  would 
represent  or  teU  or  betray  his  name  appears.  He  also 
means  to  show  in  the  136th  sonnet  that  he  was  called 
Will  or  Willy.  Now  while  Sliaksper  may  have  been 
called  "Will,"  what  word  is  there  in  the  Sonnets  which 
almost  teUs  his  name,  and  who  was  the  friend  who  was 
"  a  man  in  hue,  aU  hues  in  his  controlling?" 

Just  as  in  the  case  of  Bacon,  Raleigh,  and  Shirley,  no 
word  of  similar  meaning  to  the  names  of  any  of  them  can 
be  fomid  in  the  Sonnets  to  be  fitted  into  their  names,  so 
no  such  word  can  be  found  to  fit  Shaksper's  name.  WTiile 
the  test  in  the  136th  sonnet  might  applj'  to  him,  that  in 
the  76th  does  not,  and  the  description  in  sonnet  twenty 
applied  to  no  friend  of  his.  The  author  of  the  Sonnets 
must  appear  on  the  face  of  the  Sonnets  somewhere.  The 
writer  so  states.     He  was  clearly  a  man  fond  of  punning 


230  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

and  of  using  anagrams  and  riddles.  He  was  a  lover  of 
women  and  a  very  ardent  lover  of  one  woman  in  particular, 
and  he  was  a  quick,  impulsive,  natural  poet;  he  was  a 
very  warm  friend  and  had  many  warm  friends;  he  was  a 
courtier  and  he  has  a  peculiar  style  and  manner  by  which, 
in  addition  to  the  means  he  himself  employs  in  the  Sonnets, 
his  authorship  may  be  detected.  Who  was  this  sonneteer? 
The  Sonnets  themselves  will  show. 

But  before  undertaking  to  discover  the  sonneteer,  let 
us  briefly  take  up  the  vexed  question  of  the  identity  of 
"Mr.  W.  H."  the  dedicatee  of  the  Sonnets.     We  know  of 
course  that  the  dedicator  "T.  T."  was  not  the  author  of 
the  Sonnets,   and  that  he  was  merely  a  printer  named 
Thomas  Thorpe.     It  is  reasonably  certain  also,  as  already 
stated,  that  Mr.  W.  H.  was  a  commoner  pure  and  simple, 
because  he  was  addressed  by  the  printer  as  plain  Mr. 
W.   H.     This  Mr.   H.   was  called  by  Thorpe  ''the  only 
begetter   of   these   ensuing   sonnets."     Thorpe   meant   of 
course  by  the  word  "begetter"  that  Mr.  W.  H.  was  the 
procurer  or  furnisher  of  the  manuscript  to  him,  and  not 
the  composer  of  the  poetry  contained  in  the  manuscript. 
Wlio  was  this  begetter  or  furnisher?     While  it  is  not  of  the 
slightest  importance  who  he  was  or  how  he  was  called  and 
known  unless  he  can  be  connected  in  some  way  with  the 
author,  I  will  hazard  a  conjecture  that  he  was  the  William 
Hewes  who  was  a  servitor  and  follower  of  the  Essex  family. 
Walter,  Earl  of  Essex,  the  father  of  Penelope  Devereux, 
afterward  Lady  Rich,  and  of  Robert  the  second  Earl  of 
Essex,  the  unfortunate  favorite  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  died 
on  the  twenty-second  day  of  September,  1576.     Edward 
Waterhouse,  who  was  with  him  during  his  last  illness,  thus 
describes  the  incidents  which  occurred  just  preceding  his 


SONNETS  DO  NOT  LEAD  TO  TRUE  SHAKESPEARE.  231 

death.  I  quote  from  the  "Lives  and  Letters  of  the  Dever- 
eux,  Earls  of  Essex,"  written  by  Captain  Devereux  of  the 
Royal  Navy,  Vol.  1,  p.  145: 

"The  night  following,  the  Friday  night,  which  was  the 
night  before  he  died,  he  called  William  Hewes,  which  was 
his  musician,  to  play  upon  the  virginal  and  to  sing.  '  Play,' 
said  he,  'my  song.  Will  Hewes,  and  I  will  sing  it  myself.' 
So  he  did  it  most  joyfully,  not  as  the  howling  swan,  which, 
still  looking  down,  waileth  her  end,  but  as  a  sweet  lark; 
lifting  up  his  hands,  and  casting  up  his  eyes  to  his  God, 
with  this  mounted  the  crystal  skies,  and  reached  with  his 
unwearied  tongue  the  top  of  the  highest  heavens.  Who 
could  have  heard  and  seen  this  violent  conflict,  having 
not  a  stonied  heart,  without  innumerable  tears  and  watery 
plaints?" 

I  am  entitled,  I  think,  to  the  foregoing  conjecture, 
especially  upon  a  matter  so  unimportant  as  the  discovery 
of  the  full  name — Christian  and  surname — of  the  conveyer 
of  the  Shake-speare  Sonnets  to  printer  Thorpe.  But  it  is 
a  mere  conjecture. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

PHILISIDES  WROTE  THE  SONNETS,  AND  HOW  IDENTIFIED. 

"A  halting  sonnet  of  his  own  pure  hrain." 

—Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  v,  4. 

And  who  was  Philisides,  and  how  do  you  know  that 
he  wrote  the  Shakespeare  Sonnets? 

In  the  reign  of  Queen  EHzabeth,  every  literary  person 
knew  who  Philisides  was. 

Edmund  Spenser,  in  lamenting  his  untimely  death, 
wrote  thus  of  him : 

"  Nor  ever  sing  the  love-lays  which  he  made, — 
Who  ever  made  such  lays  of  love  as  he? 
I'       Nor  ever  read  the  riddles  which  he  said — 
Unto  yourselves,  to  make  you  merry  glee." 

And  the  great  poet,  Michael  Drayton,  in  his  epistle  to 
Reynolds,  relates  how  Philisides  infected  his  contempo- 
raries and  immediate  successors  with  his  puns  and  riddles : 

"  The  noble  Sidney  with  this  last  arose, 
That  hero  was  for  numbers  and  for  prose. 
That  throughly  paced  our  language,  as  to  show 
The  plenteous  English  hand  in  hand  might  go 
With  Greek  and  Latin,  and  did  first  reduce 
Our  tongue  from  Lyly's  writing  then  in  use ; 
Talking  of  stones,  stars,  plants,  of  fishes,  flies, 
Playing  with  words  and  idle  similes ; 
As  the  English,  apes  and  very  zanies  be 
Of  everything  that  they  do  hear  and  see, 
So  imitating  his  ridiculous  tricks, 
They  spake  and  writ  all  like  mere  lunatics." 


PHILISIDES    WROTE   THE    SONNETS.  233 

Yes,  Philisides  was  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  and  I  feel  sure 
that  I  can  convince  the  reader  that  he  wrote  the  Shake- 
speare Sonnets.  I  will  give  a  few  reasons  which  I  think 
are  valid  and  unanswerable  in  support  of  the  claim. 

The  first  one  is  that  ''love"  is  the  chief  word  and  argu- 
ment of  the  Sonnets.  It  is  found  in  them  more  than  two 
hundred  times.  Love  is  the  word  which  tells  the  author's 
name.  He  himself  so  states  in  the  tenth  line  of  the  seventy- 
sixth  sonnet : 

''  0  know,  sweet  love,  I  always  write  of  you 
And  you  and  love  are  still  my  argument." 

But  how  does  love  stand  for  and  represent  the  name  of 
Sir  Philip  Sidney?  Sidney  indulged  rather  extravagantly 
in  what  Camden  calls  ''the  alchemy  of  wit."  In  other 
words,  he  arranged  his  name  in  the  form  of  an  anagram 
or  metagram.  If  the  reader  will  consult  a  very  interesting 
article  on  Spenser  in  Volume  2  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
for  November,  1858,  on  page  676,  he  will  find  Sidney's 
method  of  obtaining  a  pseudonym  thus  described.  I  here 
quote  the  material  part  of  it : 

"Sir  Philip  Sidney,  having  abridged  his  own  name  into 
Phil.  Sid.,  anagrammatized  it  into  Philisides.  Refining  still 
further,  he  translated  Sid.,  the  abridgment  of  Sidus,  into 
Astron,  and  retaining  the  Phil,  as  derived  from  Philos, 
loved,  he  constructed  for  himself  another  pseudonjmi, 
and  adopted  the  poetical  name  of  Astrophil,  star  of  love, 
or  love  star.  Feeling  moreover  that  the  Lady  Rich, 
celebrated  in  his  sonnets,  was  the  bright  particular  star  of 
his  affection,  he  designated  her,  in  conformity  with  his 
own  assumed  name,  Stella." 


234  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Hence  Philip  was  "love"  and  Penelope  Rich,  or  Stella, 
was  the  star  of  his  love.  Sidney  was  known  both  as 
Astrophil  and  Philisides  to  his  friends  and  the  men  and 
women  of  letters,  and  therefore  in  the  seventy-sixth  sonnet 
he  could  truthfully  say : 

"Why  write  I  still  all  one,  ever  the  same? 
And  keep  invention  in  the  noted  weed, 
That  every  word  doth  almost  tell  my  name 
Showing  their  birth,  and  where  they  did  proceed." 

A  perusal  by  the  reader  of  Sidney's  life  or  of  his  poems 
will  satisfy  every  disinterested  reader  that  I  have  right- 
fully identified  him  by  the  word  "love."  That  is  the 
word  which  almost  tells  his  name. 

A  second  and  very  strong  reason  for  identifying  Sidney 
as  the  author  of  the  Shakespeare  Sonnets  is  founded  upon 
the  correct  and  reasonable  interpretation  of  the  seventh 
line  of  the  twentieth  sonnet — a  line  which  has  been  a 
stumbling-block  to  all  the  commentators,  and  their  name 
is  legion.  No  one  has  hitherto  been  able  to  explain  that 
line  or  to  give  the  poet's  meaning  satisfactorily.  The 
line  reads  thus: 

"A  man  in  hue,  all  hues  in  his  controlling." 

I  explain  it  thus:  Sir  Philip  Sidney  had  two  very  inti- 
mate friends — Sir  Edmund  Dyer  and  Fulke  Greville, 
afterward  Lord  Brooke,  and  his  love  for  them  "was  won- 
derful, surpassing  the  love  of  women."  Sidney,  Greville, 
and  Dyer  in  their  poems  were  fond  of  punning  and  playing 
upon  their  own  names.  Dyer,  for  instance,  wrote  a  poem 
which  elicited  a  poetical  answer  from  Sidney  and  a  poetical 
reply  from  Greville,  and  the  name  of  Dyer  in  the  last 


PHILISIDES   WROTE   THE    SONNETS.  235 

stanza  of  one  was  changed  into  Die  ere,  while  Greville's 
name  in  the  repHcation  was  metamorphosed  into  Grieve-ill. 
I  quote  for  the  reader's  benefit  some  of  the  verses.  The 
first  is  from  Dyer: 

''0,  frail  inconstant,  kind 
0,  safe  in  trust  to  no  man! 
No,  women  angels  be,  and  lo 
My  mistress  is  a  woman. 

My  muse,  if  any  ask, 
^Vhose  grievous  case  was  such? 
Die  ere  thou  let  his  name  be  known, 
His  folly  shows  so  much." 

A  part  of  Greville's  reply  is  as  follows: 

"  And  I  myself  am  he 
That  doth  with  none  compare, 
Except  in  woes  and  lack  of  worth 
Whose  states  more  wretched  are. 

Let  no  man  ask  my  name. 
Nor  what  else  I  should  be 
For  Grieve-ill  pain,  for  low  estate, 
Doth  best  decipher  me." 

The  Shakespeare  Sonnets  were  addressed  to  Dyer  and 
in  the  twentieth  sonnet  Sidney  puns  upon  Dyer's  name, 
likening  him  to  a  dyer,  who  in  his  business  controls  and 
fixes  all  hues  and  colors. 

And  here  a  third  good  reason  for  the  identification  of 
Sidney  as  the  author  of  the  Sonnets  can  be  adduced, 
namely,  the  connection  and  resemblance  between  the 
poet's  statements  and  the  surrounding  facts  and  circum- 


236  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

stances.  Sidne}',  in  the  Sonnets,  advises  his  friend  Dyer 
to  marry.  He  uses  such  arguments  to  persuade  him  as 
his  own  mentor,  Hubert  Languet,  had  previously  urged 
upon  him.  Symonds  says  that  "  Languet  frequently 
"vvTote,  urging  Sidney  to  marry  and  using  arguments 
similar  to  those  which  Shake-speare  pressed  on  his  fair 
friend."  Dyer  was  an  unmarried  man,  and  never  did 
marry,  and  it  is  evident  from  his  life-history  that  he  was 
also  deeply  enamored  of  the  wanton  Lady  Rich.  When- 
ever she  was  in  trouble,  she  made  use  of  Dyer.  So  also 
did  her  brother,  whom  she  ruled. 

This  dearly  beloved  friend  of  Sidney  was  a  favorite  at 
Court.  He  was  an  adviser  of  Sir  Christopher  Hatton; 
and,  as  above  stated,  Stella's  brother,  the  Earl  of  Essex, 
greatly  relied  upon  him.  Thus,  in  the  summer  of  1587 
Essex  wrote  to  Dyer,  after  making  a  vain  search  for  him 
at  Winchester  House,  ''T  would  have  given  a  thousand 
pounds  to  have  had  one  hour's  speech  with  you;  so  much 
I  would  hearken  to  your  counsel  and  so  greatly  do  I 
esteem  your  friendship." 

That  Sidney  was  rather  fond  of  giving  such  marrying 
advice  as  is  used  in  the  Sonnets  is  shown  very  plainly  in 
his  poetical  dialogue  between  Geron  and  Histor  in  Chapter 
71  of  the  "Arcadia."  It  will  not  appear  strange  to  any 
reader  of  that  book  that  Sidney  could  actually  think  or 
say  that  he  loved  a  man  as  fondly  as  appears  in  the  Sonnets, 
for  in  the  "Arcadia"  he  similarly  pictures  the  love  of  Musi- 
dorusand  Pyrocles.  D'Israeli,  in  his  "Amenities  of  Litera- 
ture," says  that  "  their  friendship  resembles  the  love  which 
is  felt  for  the  beautiful  sex"  and  Coleridge  observes  that 
"  the  language  of  these  two  friends  in  the  Arcadia  is  such 
as  we  would  not  use  except  to  women." 


PHILISIDES  WROTE   THE   SONNETS.  237 

Sonnets  37,  66,  110,  and  125  very  fairly  describe  Sidney. 
He  was  extremely  poor  and  very  proud,  and  his  parents 
were  always  distressed  by  poverty.  His  body  after  death 
was  seized  for  debt  and  kept  three  months  from  burial, 
until  Walsingham  mustered  enough  money  of  his  own  to 
pay  Sidney's  creditors.  He  bore  the  canopy  (see  sonnet 
125)  as  a  gentleman  in  waiting  or  cup-bearer  for  the  Queen 
in  the  summer  of  1578,  and  he  learned  enough  from  per- 
sonal intercourse  with  courtiers,  male  and  female,  to  utter 
the  mournful  cry  which  is  contained  in  the  66th  sonnet. 
Sidney's  quarrel  with  Oxford  and  his  bold  and  pointed 
letter  to  the  Queen  concerning  the  worthlessness  and 
meanness  of  the  Duke  of  Anjou,  and  the  danger  to  the 
realm  if  she  married  a  Roman  Catholic,  caused  his  dis- 
grace and  retirement  from  the  Court. 

Bourne,  in  his  ''Life  of  Sidney,"  says  that  "early  in 
January,  1580,  Sidney  addressed  to  the  Queen  a  very  bold 
and  memorable  letter.  It  was  the  Protestants,  Sidney 
urged,  who  were  the  stoutest,  if  not  the  only,  supporters 
of  the  Queen's  government.  'How  their  hearts  will  be 
galled,  if  not  aliened,  when  they  shall  see  you  take  for  a 
husband  a  Frenchman  and  a  Papist,  in  whom  (howsoever 
fine  wits  may  find  farther  dealings  or  painted  excuses) 
the  very  common  people  know  this,  that  he  is  the  son  of 
a  Jezebel  of  our  age — that  his  brother  made  oblation  of 
his  sister's  marriage,  the  easier  to  make  massacres  of  our 
brethren  in  belief — that  he  himself,  contrary  to  his  promise 
and  to  all  gratefulness,  having  his  liberty  and  principal 
estate  by  the  Huguenots'  means,  did  sack  La  Charite, 
and  utterly  spoil  them  with  fire  and  sword!' 

"'Since,  then,'  the  brave  courtier  wrote  in  conclusion — 
'  since,  then,  it  is  dangerous  for  your  State — since  to  your 


238  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

person  it  can  be  no  way  comfortable,  you  not  desiring 
marriage,  and  neither  to  person  nor  State  he  is  to  bring 
any  more  good  than  anybody  (but  more  evil  he  may) — 
since  the  causes  that  should  drive  you  to  this  are  fears  of 
either  that  which  can  not  happen  or  by  this  means  can  not 
be  prevented^I  do  with  most  humble  heart  say  unto  your 
Majesty  that,  as  for  your  standing  alone,  you  must  take 
it  for  a  singular  honour  God  hath  done  you,  to  be  indeed 
the  only  protector  of  His  Church,  As  for  this  man,  as 
long  as  he  is  but  Monsieur  in  might  and  a  Papist  in  pro- 
fession, he  neither  can  nor  will  greatly  shield  you;  and, 
if  he  get  once  to  be  king,  his  defence  will  be  like  Ajax' 
shield,  which  rather  weighed  down  than  defended  those 
that  bare  it.  Against  contempt,  if  there  be  any,  which 
I  will  never  believe,  let  your  excellent  virtues  of  piety, 
justice,  and  liberality  daily — if  it  be  possible — more  and 
more  shine.  Let  such  particular  actions  be  found  out, 
which  be  easy  as  I  think  to  be  done,  by  w^hich  you  may 
gratify  all  the  hearts  of  your  people.  Let  those  in  whom 
you  find  trust,  and  to  whom  you  have  committed  trust 
in  your  weighty  affairs,  be  held  up  in  the  eyes  of  your 
subjects.  Lastly,  doing  as  you  do,  you  shall  be  as  you 
should  be,  the  example  of  princes,  the  ornament  of  this 
age,  the  most  excellent  fruit  of  your  progenitors,  and  the 
perfect  mirror  cf  your  posterity.' " 

The  good  sense  of  this  long  epistle  did  not  influence  the 
Queen,  nor  did  the  compliments  with  which  it  ended 
conciliate  her.  For  at  least  two  years  longer  she  regarded 
the  Duke  of  Anjou  as  her  suitor,  and  Sidney  was  punished 
for  his  boldness  by  exclusion  for  a  time  from  the  royal 
presence.  Languet  was  not  mistaken  in  supposing  that 
Sidney  was  in  danger  of  imprisonment  and  might  have  to 


PHILISIDES  WROTE   THE   SONNETS.  239 

flee  the  country.  "  You  will  hardly  find  safety  in  Flanders," 
Languet  wrote  on  the  30th  of  January,  "and  still  less  in 
France;  your  religion  shuts  you  out  of  Spain  and  Italy; 
so  that  Germany  is  the  only  country  left  to  receive  you, 
should  you  be  forced  to  quit  your  ovra  land." 

The  careful  reader  of  English  history  will  remember  that 
in  Camden's  "Annals"  it  is  related  that  Queen  Elizabeth 
was  so  incensed  by  the  publication  of  a  book  inveighing 
in  violent  terms  against  the  proposed  match  with  the 
Duke,  which  the  author  termed  "  an  imion  of  a  daughter 
of  God  with  a  son  of  .\ntichrist,"  that  she  caused  the  author 
Stubbs,  the  publisher  Page,  and  one  Singleton,  the  printer, 
to  be  tried  under  an  act  passed  by  Philip  and  Mary  against 
the  writers  and  disseminators  of  seditious  publications, 
and  they  were  sentenced  to  have  their  right  hands  struck 
off.  Elizabeth  must  have  been  very  angry  at  Sidney  for 
his  bold  protest  against  the  intended  marriage. 

Sidney  could  very  well  say  that  he  was  made  lame  by 
Fortune's  dearest  spite.  He  was  not  permitted  to  marry 
Anne  Cecil;  and  Penelope  Devereaux,  whom  he  dearly 
loved,  was  given  away  to  Lord  Rich,  a  man  whom  she 
despised  and  hated.  Sidney  was  fond  of  spending  money 
when  he  could  get  it  and  he  was  very  liberal  and  aristo- 
cratic; but  his  means  were  lunited  and  he  was  greatly  in 
debt.  He  was  in  disgrace  at  Court;  he  was  a  dependent 
upon  Leicester;  he  had  made  himself  ''a  motley  to  the 
view." 

A  fourth  reason  for  the  belief  that  Sir  Philip  Sicbiey 
wrote  the  Shakespeare  Sonnets  is  that  his  name,  among 
his  associates,  was  "Will"  or  "Willy."  Spenser  calls  him 
so  m  his  "  Tears  of  the  Muses."  In  the  eclogue  on  Sicbiey's 
death,  heretofore  quoted,  and  printed  in  Davison's  "  Poetical 


240  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Rhapsodies"  in  1602,  Sidney  is  lamented  in  almost  every 
stanza  by  the  name  of  "Willy." 

Thus  it  will  now  be  noted  by  the  careful  reader  that 
Sidney's  friend  was  Dyer,  ''a  man  in  hue,  all  hues  in  his 
controlling,"  exactly  fitting  the  twentieth  sonnet;  that 
the  poet  was  Sidney,  whose  name  was  ''love" — the  argu- 
ment of  the  sonnets,  as  pointed  out  in  sonnet  seventy- 
six;  and  that  his  name,  as  expressed  in  the  136th  sonnet, 
was  "Will."  It  will  also  be  particularly  noted  that  all 
the  surrounding  facts  and  circumstances  coincide  with  the 
poet's  statements.  The  name  of  no  other  poet  in  the 
days  of  Elizabeth  will  successfully  meet  all  these  tests, 
and  all  must  be  met. 

I  give,  now,  a  fifth  reason  for  my  opinion  that  Sidney 
wrote  the  Sonnets,  namely,  the  similarity  of  style  between 
the  Shake-speare  Sonnets  and  the  acknowledged  writings 
of  Sidney. 

Desiring  to  abstain  from  self-assertion  and  to  plant 
myself  upon  the  firm  basis  ■  of  received  authority,  I  will 
lay  down  no  rule  of  my  own  as  to  Sidney's  style,  pre- 
ferring to  adopt  the  judgment  of  Jusserand,  who,  in  "The 
English  Novel  before  Shakespeare,"  says,  at  page  255,  that 
"  the  rules  of  Sidney's  style  consist  first,  in  the  antithetical 
and  cadenced  repetition  of  the  same  words  in  the  sentences 
merely  for  effect,  as  for  example,  '  A  greater  greatness  to 
give  a  kingdom  than  to  get  a  kingdom,'  and  'either  for 
the  love  of  honor  or  honor  of  his  love.'  Secondly,  in 
persistently  ascribing  life  and  feeling  to  inanimate  objects, 
as  for  example,  '  Did  you  not  mark  how  the  wind  whistled 
and  the  seas  danced  for  joy;  how  the  sails  did  swell  with 
pride,  and  all  because  they  had  Urania?'" 

I  give  a  few  examples  under  each  rule: 


PHILISIDES  WROTE   THE    SONNETS.  241 

Jusserand's  First  Rule. 
"  Music  to  hear,  why  hearest  thou  music  sadly?" 

—Sonnet  8,  1. 

"So  long  lives  this  and  this  gives  life  to  thee." 

—Sonnet  18,  14. 

"  Mine  ransoms  yours  and  yours  must  ransom  me." 

—Sonnet  120,  14. 

"Love's  fire  heats  water,  water  cools  not  love." 

—Sonnet  154,  14. 

Jusserand's  Second  Rule. 

"When  forty  winters  shall  besiege  thy  brow, 
And  dig  deep  trenches  in  thy  beauty's  field." 

—Sonnet  2,  1. 

"  Full  many  a  glorious  morning  have  I  seen 
Flatter  the  mountain  tops  with  sovereign  eyes." 

—Sonnet  33,  1. 

"Lean  penury  within  that  pen  doth  dwell." 

—Sonnet  84,  5. 

"The  roses  fearfully  on  thorns  did  stand, 
One  blushing  shame,  another  white  despair." 

—Sonnet  99. 

Sonnet  99  abounds  in  the  ascription  of  life  and  feeling 
to  inanimate  objects,  and  a  comparison  of  the  sonnet  with 
Sidney's  writings  will  show  many  such  resemblances. 

Again,  the  phrases  and  turns  of  expression  in  the 
Sonnets  afford  striking  resemblances  to  those  which  Sidney 
uses,  as  for  example: 

"  When  forty  winters  shall  besiege  thy  brow." 

—Sonnet  2,  1. 

"  When  forty  winters  have  I  married  been." 

— Arcadia. 

"And  you  must  live,  drawn  by  your  own  siveet  skill." 

—Sonnet  16,  14. 

"With  his  sweet  skill,  my  skilless  youth  he  drew." 

— Arcadia. 


242  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

"  Describe  Adonis,  and  the  counterfeit 
Is  poorly  imitated  after  you." 

—Sonnet  53,  5. 

"  I  will  think  my  pictures  be  image-like 
Of  saints'  perfection,  poorly  counterfeiting  thee." 

—Sidney. 

"Kind  is  my  love  to-day,  to-morrow  kind, 
Still  constant  in  a  wondrous  excellence." 

—Sonnet  108,  5. 

"  Such  as  you  see,  such  still  you  shall  me  find, 
Constant  and  kind." 

—Arcadia. 

"Love  is  my  sin,  and  thy  dear  virtue,  hate." 

-Sonnet  142,  1. 

''Then  love  is  sin  and  let  me  sinful  be." 

— Astrophel  and  Stella. 

Sidney  and  the  author  of  the  Sonnets  were  both  fond 
of  using  ambiguous  or  paradoxical  descriptions  of  persons 
or  objects.     To  illustrate : 

Shake-speare  Sonnet  numbered  135  reads  thus  (the 
"wills"  not  capitalized  being  italicized  by  me): 

"Whoever  hath  her  wish,  thou  hast  thy  will, 
And  will  to  boot,  and  will  in  overplus ; 
More  than  enough  am  I  that  vex  thee  still, 
To  thy  sweet  will  making  addition  thus. 
Wilt  thou,  whose  ivill  is  large  and  spacious. 
Not  once  vouchsafe  to  hide  my  tvill  in  thine? 
Shall  will  in  others  seem  right  gracious, 
And  in  my  will  no  fair  acceptance  shine? 
The  sea,  all  water,  yet  receives  rain  still. 
And  in  abundance  addeth  to  his  store ; 
So  thou,  being  rich  in  will,  add  to  thy  will 
One  will  of  mine,  to  make  thy  large  will  more. 
Let  no  unkind  no  fair  beseechers  kill ; 
Think  all  but  one,  and  me  in  that  one  will." 


PHILISIDES    WROTE   THE   SONNETS.  243 

Sidney,  in  the  37th  sonnet  of  Astrophel  and  Stella, 
indulges  in  the  same  kind  of  word  play,  as  thus : 

"  Toward  Aurora's  Court  a  njmiph  doth  dwell, 
Rich  in  all  beauties,  which  man's  eye  can  see, 
Beauties  so  far  from  reach  of  words,  that  we 
Abase  her  praise,  saying  she  doth  excel; 
Rich  in  the  treasure  of  deserved  renown, 
Rich  in  the  riches  of  a  royal  heart, 
Rich  in  those  gifts  which  giveth  eternal  crown; 
Who  though  most  rich  in  these  and  every  part 
Which  make  the  patents  of  true  worldly  bliss, 
Hath  no  misfortune  but  that  Rich  she  is." 

Sidnev  and  the  author  of  the  Sonnets  both  use  the 
expressions:  "And  so,  and  in,  and  therefore,  and  though, 
and  when  alas,  as  I,  but  for,  but  now,  but  then,  but  yet, 
even  as,  farewell,  for  that,  for  as,  hast  thou,  how  much 
more,  how  oft,  I  never,  if  thou,  like  to,  needs  must,  0 
else,  0  how,  or  if,  perforce,  save  that,  since  what,  since 
that,  so  oft,  take  heed,  therefore,  thou  art,  thus  is,  whereto, 
why  dost  thou." 

Other  resemblances  and  peculiarities  are  readily  traced. 
For  instance,  the  author  of  the  Sonnets  ends  a  line  with 
the  letter  I,  as  thus  in  sonnet  72,  line  7 :  "  And  hang  more 
praises  on  deceased  I." 

Compare  the  ''Astrophel  and  Stella"  sonnets  103,  104, 
and  105: 

"She  so  disheveled,  blushed  from  window,  I." 
"From  out  my  ribs  and  puffing  proves  that  I." 
"I  swear  by  her  I  love  and  lack  that  I." 

In  sonnet  85  the  poet  uses  the  phrase,  "  And  like  unlet- 
tered clerk,  still  cry,  Amen." 


244  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

It  is  noticeable  that  Sidney  was  a  clerk  in  holy  orders 
in  the  church  of  Wliitford. 

Both  Mr,  Brown,  in  his  "  Shake-speare's  Sonnets 
Solved,"  and  Massey,  in  his  "  Commentary  on  the  Sonnets," 
unwittingly  furnish  corroborative  evidence  in  favor  of 
my  claim  for  Sidney. 

Mr.  Brown  asserts  that  Sidney's  love  for  Stella  (Penel- 
ope Rich)  and  her  love  for  him  gave  rise  to  the  Sonnets, 
and  Massey  admits  that  "the  supposed  dark  lady  of  the 
Sonnets  is  the  famous  golden-haired,  black-eyed  beauty, 
Penelope  Rich,  the  first  love  of  Philip  Sidney,  the  cousin 
of  Elizabeth  Vernon,  the  sister  of  Essex  and  the  Helen  of 
the  Elizabethan  poets." 

The  doctrme  of  the  cycles  is  very  clearly  set  out  in 
Sonnet  123,  which  I  ask  the  reader  to  consider  very  care- 
fully ;  and  it  is  very  easy  to  show  by  authority  from  whence 
Sidney  derived  the  views  expressed  in  that  sonnet.  He 
was  instructed  by  Giordano  Bruno,  who  visited  England 
in  1583,  residing  for  several  years  in  London. 

Bourne,  in  his  ''Life  of  Sidney,"  states  that  on  the 
evening  of  Ash  Wednesday,  1584,  Bruno  was  invited  by 
Greville  to  meet  Sidney  and  others  to  hear  the  reasons  for 
his  belief  that  the  earth  moves,  and  their  meetings  were 
frequent,  for  Bruno  writes  that,  "We  met  in  a  chamber 
in  Greville's  house  to  discuss  moral,  metaphysical,  mathe- 
matical, and  natural  speculations."  Sidney  imbibed  his 
ide^s  and  freely  sympathized  with  him,  and  Bruno  dedi- 
cated two  of  his  books  to  Sidney. 

The  107th  sonnet  has  received  all  kinds  of  strained 
and  foolish  interpretation.  One  writer  calls  Bacon  "the 
mortal  moon,"  and  Massey,  Muiton,  and  Tyler  say  that 
the  mortal  moon  referred  to  in  the  sonnet  denoted  Queen 


PHILISIDES   WROTE   THE   SONNETS.  245 

Elizabeth;  but,  viewed  in  the  hght  which  knowledge  of 
the  true  author  of  the  Sonnets  sheds  around  them,  it  is 
clear  that  no  man  or  woman  is  meant  at  all,  but  the  great 
power  of  Turkey,  represented  by  the  crescent  moon,  which 
had  then  been  humbled  and  crippled,  and  was  no  longer  a 
disturbing  element  to  either  the  Protestant  or  Papal 
world.  Sidney  had,  from  his  first  acquaintance  with 
Languet,  been  so  filled  by  him  with  news  about  thrones 
and  dynasties  and  governmental  complications  that  he 
could  not  keep  Turkey  out  of  his  love  sonnets;  and  so  in 
the  thirteenth  sonnet  of  "Astrophel  and  Stella"  he  asks 
the  question: 

"  Wliether  the  Turkish  new  moon  minded  be 
To  fill  her  horns  this  year  on  Christian  coasts?" 

Sonnets  numbered  127,  128,  130,  131,  and  132  clearly 
refer  to  Sidney's  mistress,  Penelope  Rich,  and  he  intimated 
that  Dyer  had  supplanted  him  in  her  affections. 

In  the  127th  sonnet  he  describes  a  woman  whose  "  eyes 
are  raven  black."  So  were  Stella's  eyes.  She  is  nowhere 
in  any  of  the  Sonnets  described  as  a  black  woman,  save  in 
her  deeds.     Sidney  speaks  of  them  thus : 

« 

''  When  nature  made  her  chief  work,  Stella's  eyes, 
In  color  black,  why  wrapp't  she  beams  so  bright? 
Would  she  in  heavy  black,  like  painter  wise 
Frame  daintiest  lustre,  mix'd  of  shades  and  light?" 

I  do  not  imderstand  that  Sidney,  in  sonnet  130,  admits 
that  his  mistress  is  deficient  in  any  particular  of  beauty 
or  accomplishments.  He  had  read  (or  his  friend  Spenser 
had  read  to  him)  the  extravagant  description  of  a  woman 
whose  eyes  Spenser  compared  to  the  sun,  her  lips  to  coral. 


246  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

her  bfeasts  to  snow,  her  hair  to  wTres,  her  cheeks  to  roses, 
her  breath  to  perfumes,  her  speech  to  music,  and  her  walk 
to  that  of  a  goddess,  and  in  this  sonnet,  in  a  spirit  of  pleas- 
antr}%  he  ridicules  Spenser's  bombastic  description,  and 
at  the  same  time  eulogizes  his  own  beloved  mistress. 
Here  is  Spenser's  extravaganza: 

"  Lo !  where  she  comes  along  with  portly  pace, 
Like  Phoebe,  from  her  chamber  of  the  East, 
Arising  forth  to  run  her  mighty  race, 
Clad  all  in  white,  that  seems  a  virgin  best. 
Her  long,  loose  yellow  locks  like  golden  wire, 
Sprinkled  with  pearl  and  pearling  flowers  atween, 
Do  like  a  golden  mantle  her  attire, 
Her  goodly  eyes  like  sapphires  shining  bright. 
Her  forehead  ivory  white. 

Her  cheeks  like  apples,  which  the  sun  hath  rudded, 
Her  lips  like  cherries  charming  men  to  bite. 
Her  breast  like  to  a  bowl  of  cream  uncudded, 
Her  paps  like  lilies  budded, 
Her  sno\\y  neck  like  to  a  marble  tower. 
And  all  her  body  like  a  palace  fair, 
Ascending  up  with  many  a  stately  stair. 
To  honor's  seat  and  chastity's  sweet  bower." 

And  Sidney,  as  I  think,  answers  Spenser's  extravagant 
eulogium  of  his  mistress  in  the  one  hundred  and  thirtieth 
sonnet  in  a  very  modest  way,  thus : 

"  My  mistress'  eyes  are  nothing  like  the  sun ; 
Coral  is  far  more  red  than  her  lips  red : 
If  snow  be  white,  why  then  her  breasts  are  dun; 
If  hairs  be  wires,  black  wires  grow  on  her  head. 
I  have  seen  roses  damask'd,  red  and  white, 
But  no  such  roses  see  I  in  her  cheeks; 
And  in  some  perfumes  is  there  more  delight 


PHILISIDES   WROTE    THE    SONNETS.  247 

Than  in  the  breath  that  from  my  mistress  reeks. 

I  love  to  hear  her  speak,  yet  well  I  know 

That  music  hath  a  far  more  pleasing  somid; 

I  grant  I  never  saw  a  goddess  go,— 

My  mistress,  when  she  walks,  treads  on  the  ground; 
And  yet,  by  heaven,  I  think  my  love  as  rare 
As  any  she  bely'd  with  false  compare." 

The  next  stanza  very  clearly  shows  what  the  allusions 
in  the  poet's  mind  to  blackness  really  meant.  The  poet 
says: 

"  In  nothing  art  thou  black,  save  in  thy  deeds. 
And  thence  this  slander,  as  I  think,  proceeds." 

A  little  farther  on  he  says : 

"  Thine  eyes  I  love,  and  they,  as  pitying  me, 
Knowing  thy  heart  torments  me  with  disdain, 
Have  put  on  black,  and  loving  mourners  be, 
Looking  with  pretty  ruth  upon  my  pain." 

Stella  with  her  black  eyes,  lovely  face,  and  bewitching 
form,  was  very  beautiful  indeed,  but  she  was  a  bad  woman, 
and  no  one  can  read  "Astrophel  and  Stella"  without 
believing  that  Stella  had  been  to  Sidney  the  object  of  a 
coarse  passion. 

Her  after  life  and  her  conduct  with  Charles  Blount 
strongly  testify  against  her. 

Speaking  of  Lady  Rich's  illicit  amours.  Brown,  in  his 
work  on  the  Sonnets,  at  page  219,  very  accurately  relates 
the  facts  as  to  the  ''Stella"  of  Philisides: 

"Lady  Rich,  while  Sidney  lived,  gave  scandal  no 
tongue,  but  after  his  death,  either  through  excessive  grief, 
or  hate  of  her  lord,  she  forsook  the  path  of  virtue  and  fair 


248  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

fame,  and  eventually  her  husband  behaved  cruelly  to  her; 
abandoned  her,  though  not  without  just  cause,  and  treated 
her  in  a  manner  that  drove  her  to  despair  and  revenge. 
Neglected  by  her  husband  for  years,  she,  following  his 
example,  transferred  her  affections  to  another:  she  gave 
her  love  to  Mount  joy,  afterwards  Earl  of  Devonshire,  who 
doted  upon  her,  and  after  some  years  married  her.     But 
disaster  now  followed  disaster.     Elizabeth  banished  her 
the    Court;    but    upon    James    coming    to    the    crown 
she   and   Lord   Mount  joy   came   again   into   high   favor. 
Scandal,  however,  followed  her,  and  the  illegality  of  her 
marriage  with  the  earl  while  her  husband  was  still  living, 
which  had  just  been  effected  to  put  a  good  colour  upon 
their  illicit  loving,  was  discussed;  and  the  king,  exceed- 
ingly wTathful,  told  Mountjoy  that  he  had  'purchased  a 
fair  woman  with  a  black  soul,'  and  though  Mountjoy,  in 
a  letter  to  the  King,  showed  legal  reasons  sufficient  to  show 
his  right  to  marry  her,  it  would  not  avail.     This  was  more 
than  he  could  bear;  he  retired  from  Court,  and  was  soon 
after  taken  with  a  severe  illness,  consequent  on  his  excess- 
ive grief,  and  died.     His  wife  attended  him  to  the  last, 
and  never  survived  this  disgrace;  she  died  shortly  after, 
in  1606.     A  relative  of  Mountjoy  declared  she  had  brought 
shame  upon  her  and  her  whole  kindred.     It  would  seem 
that  Mountjoy,  though  deluded  with  the  belief,  was  not 
her  only  lover.     It  also  appears,  during  the  latter  years  of 
the  time  she  spent  under  the  roof  of  her  first  husband, 
that  he  was  not  so  much  the  tyrant  as  tyrannized  over;  for 
she,  at  her  own  option,  sometimes  left  her  husband's  roof, 
and  returned  again  to  it;  and  upon  her  first  fit  of  love  for 
Mountjoy,  she  left  her  husband  to  live  with  him,  and  upon 
his  being  sent,  by  order  of  the  Queen,  to  Ireland  to  aid 


PHILISIDES   WROTE   THE   SONNETS.  249 

Essex  to  suppress  the  rebellion,  she  returned  to  her  hus- 
band, though  but  to  leave  him  on  Mount  joy's  return; 
and  as  remarked,  she  was  not  indifferent  to  the  proffered 
love  of  others,  though  in  a  more  guarded  way.  So,  taking 
her  for  all  in  all,  possibly  no  woman  ever  presented  two 
such  contrasted  pictures,  both  in  feature  and  in  morals; 
she  was  radiant  fair,  yet  intensel)^  dark  in  the  lustrous 
depth  of  her  black  eyes;  she  was,  while  Sidney  lived,  an 
example  of  virtue ;  after  his  death,  blot  upon  blot  darkened 
her  illicit  loving,  till  she  sunk,  like  a  luminous  star,  from 
dazzling  radiance  to  oblivious  infamy." 

In  this  connection  what  Chambers,  in  his  "  Encyclopedia 
of  English  Literature,"  says  of  the  Sonnets,  is  very  appro- 
priate to  Sidney's  character. 

"We  almost  wish,  with  Mr.  Hallam,  that  Shakespeare 
had  not  written  these  sonnets,  beautiful  as  many  of  them 
are  in  language  and  imager5^  They  represent  him  in  a 
character  foreign  to  that  in  which  we  love  to  regard  him 
— as  modest,  virtuous,  self-confiding,  and  independent. 
His  excessive  and  elaborate  praise  of  youthful  beauty  in  a 
man  seems  derogatory  to  his  genius,  and  savors  of  adula- 
tion; and  when  we  find  him  excuse  this  friend  for  robbing 
him  of  his  mistress — a  married  female — and  subjecting 
his  noble  spirit  to  all  the  pangs  of  jealousy,  of  guilty  love, 
and  blind,  misplaced  attachment,  it  is  painful  and  difficult 
to  believe  that  all  this  weakness  and  folly  can  be  associated 
with  the  name  of  Shakespeare." 

I  will  now  explain  how  a  bookseller  could  get  possession 
of  Sidney's  ''Sonnets"  without  authority.  None  of 
Sidney's  works  were  published  until  long  after  his  death. 
His  poetry  was  circulated  privately  among  his  friends 
for  several  years,  precisely  as  were  the  ''sugared  sonnets" 


250  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE, 

which  Meres  describes.  Sidney  died  on  the  17th  day  of 
October,  1586,  and  the  "Arcadia"  was  not  pubhshed  until 
1590.  His  friend  Greville,  in  a  letter  to  Walsingham, 
preserved  in  the  State  Paper  Office,  throws  light  on  the 
way  that  booksellers  then  got  possession  of  manuscripts : 

''Sir,  this  day  one  Ponsonby,  a  bookbinder  in  Paul's 
churchyard,  came  to  me  and  told  me  that  there  was  one 
in  hand  to  print  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  'Arcadia,'  asking 
me  if  it  were  done  with  your  honor's  consent,  or  any  other 
of  his  friends.  I  told  him  to  my  knowledge,  no;  then  he 
advised  me  to  give  warning  of  it  to  the  Archbishop  or 
Doctor  Cosen,  who  have,  as  he  says,  a  copy  of  it  to  peruse 
to  that  end,"  etc. 

When  we  consider  that  Sidney  did  not  desire  that  his 
poetry  should  be  published,  and  that  after  he  was  mortally 
wounded  at  Zutphen,  he  asked  that  the  "Arcadia"  might 
be  destroyed,  and  when  we  consider  further  that  his  poetry 
circulated  for  years  among  his  friends  and  acquaintances 
with  no  special  curator  or  preserver  of  it,  we  can  under- 
stand how  the  booksellers  could  get  a  copy  of  his  sonnets 
for  publication  in  another's  name. 

The  writer  of  the  Shake-speare  Sonnets,  like  Sidney, 
seems  to  have  had  no  expectation  nor  desire  that  they 
should  be  published,  for  in  sonnet  17  he  writes: 

"  So  should  my  papers,  yellowed  with  their  age 
Be  scorn'd,  like  old  men  of  less  truth  than  tongue." 

He  looked  no  farther  than  to  the  limit  of  their  existence 
in  manuscript. 

With  all  his  faults,  and  he  had  many  of  them,  Sidney 
was  a  great  and  gallant  man.  Greville  says  that,  as  he 
was   leaving   the   battlefield   of   Zutphen,    wounded   and 


PHILISIDES   WROTE   THE   SONNETS.  251 

thirsty  with  excess  of  bleeding,  he  called  for  some  drink, 
which  was  brought  to  him;  but  as  he  was  putting  the 
bottle  to  his  mouth  he  saw  a  poor  wounded  soldier  carried 
along,  longingly  casting  up  his  eyes  at  the  bottle.  Sir 
Philip  thereupon  took  it  from  his  mouth  before  he  drank, 
and  delivered  it  to  the  poor  man  with  the  words:  "Thy 
necessity  is  yet  greater  than  mine."  Tristram,  in  the  English 
Illustrated  Magazine,  thus  beautifully  points  out  the  quali- 
ties  which   distinguish   him   from   his   contemporaries: 

"It  was  not  only  that  he  united  in  one  character  the 
wisdom  of  a  grave  councilor  and  the  romantic  chivalry  of  a 
knight  errant;  it  was  not  only  that  his  genius  and  his 
learning  made  him  the  center  of  the  great  literary  world 
which  was  at  the  moment  springing  into  birth;  it  was  not 
only  that,  friend  of  England's  most  imaginary  poet,  he, 
too,  was  gifted  with  the  magic  virtue,  with  the  power  to 
see  the  beauty  which  the  eye  can  not  see,  and  to  hear  that 
music  only  heard  in  silence ;  these  qualities  he  shared  with 
his  contemporaries.  In  Raleigh's  blood  the  tide  of  romance 
beat  as  strongly;  Essex  was  as  brilliant  an  ornament  to 
the  Court  and  a  more  munificent  patron  of  genius ;  Drake 
showed  as  dauntless  a  courage  in  the  face  of  his  country's 
foes.  But  in  the  spiritual  elevation  of  character  which 
rose  far  above  the  standard  of  the  age,  and  to  which  none 
of  his  contemporaries  attained,  Sidney  stands  alone.  He 
was  the  bright  figure  of  Christian  chivalry  in  times  full  of 
grossness.  He  was  the  Bayard  of  an  age  in  which  most 
men  knew  no  fear,  but  in  which  he  alone  among  them  was 
without  reproach." 

The  reader  will  now  understand  why  I  do  not  invite 
him  to  try  the  Sonnets  as  a  pathway  to  the  authorship  of 
the  plays  and  poems. 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

THE   VENUS   AND   ADONIS   TEST   EXPLAINED. 

"  Bring  me  to  the  test.'' 

— Hamlet,  iii,  4. 

No  question  of  collaboration  can  possibly  arise  respect- 
ing the  authorship  of  the  poem  of  Venus  and  Adonis. 
I  am  certain  that  all  scholars  will  agree  with  me  that  one 
man,  and  one  man  only,  composed  that  poem.  If,  now, 
that  man  can  be  identified  as,  and  indubitably  shown 
to  be  the  actual  author  of  the  poem,  then  the  Shakespeare 
controversy  will  be  conclusively  and  correctly  settled.  If 
a  man  named  William  Shaksper,  of  Stratford-on-Av6n, 
wrote  the  Venus  and  Adonis  or  the  Tarquin  and  Lucrece, 
or  both  of  these  poems,  he  also  unquestionably  wrote 
the  most  important  and  best  portions  of  the  so-called 
Shakespeare  plays.  But  if  it  should  appear  that  the  real 
writer  of  the  two  poems  or  of  either  of  them  was  not 
William  Shaksper  of  Stratford,  but  a  very  different  indi- 
vidual who  merely  assumed  the  name  of  William  Shake- 
speare (not  Shaksper  or  Shakspere)  as  a  pseudonym,  then 
the  Shaksper  of  Stratford  could  not  have  been  either 
the  writer  of  the  poems  or  of  any  part  of  the  plays. 

It  will  be  observed  that  in  the  dedications  to  the  poems 
the  name  is  printed  thus,  "William  Shakespeare."  Since 
Shaksper,  in  his  will  and  in  the  mortgage  and  deed,  wrote 
his  name  "Shaksper,"  it  is  right  to  presume  that  if  he  had 
dedicated  a  poem  to  the  Earl  of  Southampton,  he  would 
have  spelled  his  own  name  correctly.  The  inferior  in 
station,  seeking   to  conciliate  and  please  a  patron  very 


THE   VENUS   AND   ADONIS   TEST.  253 

greatly  his  superior  in  station,  would  ex  necessitate  spell 
his  own  name  aright.  ^^Tiile  on  this  subject  of  the  name, 
it  is  worthy  of  remark  that  no  poem  or  play  was  ever 
attributed  or  conceded  to  William  Shaksper  or  Shakspere 
by  any  printer  or  publisher.  In  the  two  poems,  the  name 
of  William  Shakespeare  is  used.  In  Love's  Labor's  Lost, 
printed  in  1598,  the  name  used  is  ''Shakespere."  In  the 
Hamlet  of  1603,  it  is  again  different,  being  printed  thus: 
"Shake-speare,"  the  Shake  and  speare  being  separated  by 
a  hyphen.  So  also  in  the  last-named  way  the  word  is 
spelled  in  Richard  the  Second,  printed  in  1598:  in  Richard 
the  Third,  printed  in  1598;  in  Henry  the  Fourth,  printed 
in  1599;  in  the  Shake-speare  Sonnets,  printed  in  1609; 
and  in  Romeo  and  Juliet.  In  the  other  plays  the  word 
used  is  either  "Shakespere"  or  ''Shake-speare,"  but  never 
"  Shaksper."  It  is  easy,  very  easy,  to  say  that  the  printers 
and  publishers  were  to  blame  for  this  egregious  blunder, 
and  that  Shaksper  took  so  little  pride  in  his  productions 
that  he  did  not  care  to  correct  the  mistakes  in  the  spelling 
of  his  name  by  others,  but  that  apolog}'  or  attempted 
explanation,  lame  as  it  is,  will  not  and  can  not  apply  as 
to  the  spelling  by  Shaksper  of  his  own  name. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  by  the  reader  that,  as  to  the 
authorship  of  the  two  poems,  I  only  give  my  opinion, 
based  upon  facts  and  circumstances  as  I  have  traced 
them,  trusting  that  if  I  am  right  the  reader  and  other 
students  of  English  literature,  who  have  more  learning 
and  leisure  than  I  have,  will  make  the  title  of  the  real 
author  more  complete  and  perfect ;  and  being  very  willing 
to  acknowledge  my  error  if  I  am  shown  to  be  WTong  in  any 
statement  or  conclusion.  I  shall  be  content  if  I  have 
aided  the  future  discoverer  of  the  truth  in  clearing  and 


254  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

illuminating  the  pathway  to  the  real  authorship.  It  will 
be  understood,  of  course,  that  the  discovery  of  the  author 
of  the  poems  would  entitle  the  author  to  be  the  Shakespeare 
whom  the  world  honors  for  his  magnificent  poetry,  and 
desires  to  honor  without  mistake  or  cavil  as  to  his  identity. 

The  interesting,  important,  and  vital  question  is  this: 
What  English  writer  can  be  found  whose  words,  sentences, 
phrases,  peculiar  expressions,  and  style  coalesce  and  har- 
monize with  the  same  eluients  in  the  poems  and  plays? 
Such  a  man,  if  found,  should  be  a  poet  of  the  first  class; 
he  should  have  a  suitable  and  reliable  birth-date  and  birth- 
place, a  good  education,  not  necessarily  collegiate;  intense 
application,  great  industry,  acquaintance  and  even  inti- 
macy with  scholars  and  noblemen,  and  familiarity  also 
with  courts  and  the  customs  and  fashions  of  courts;  he 
should  be  what  is  called  a  Protestant  and  a  churchman; 
he  should  be  an  admirer  of  the  gentle  sex;  he  should  be  a 
user  of  Saxon  words  and  Latin  and  Greek  derivatives, 
and  a  maker  and  coiner  of  new  and  appropriate  words; 
and  he  should  be  a  man  who  was  thoroughly  familiar  with 
every  part  and  parcel  of  England  and  her  history,  as  well 
as  of  her  antecedent  great  men,  both  in  Church  and  State. 

The  poem  of  Venus  and  Adonis,  issued  in  1593,  contains 
one  hundred  and  ninety-nine  stanzas,  each  having  six 
lines  of  ten  syllables,  the  first  four  alternating  and  the 
last  two  making  a  rhyming  couplet.  It  is  an  amatory 
poem  after  Ovid,  unquestionably  written  by  a  scholar 
who  was  possessed  of  the  true  poetic  fire;  and  the  poem, 
which  is  of  the  lascivious  type,  must  have  been  very 
popular  in  the  latter  part  of  the  Sixteenth  Century.  It  is 
exceedingly  well  constructed  and  is  rich  in  poetic  imagery. 
Whatever  may  be  said  of  the  plays  or  parts  of  them  as  to 


THE   VENUS   AND   ADONIS   TEST.  255 

the  learning  or  ignorance  of  their  composers,  it  is  indis- 
putable that  no  one  but  a  learned  man  could  have  wTitten 
the  Venus  and  Adonis.  Clark's  testimony  as  to  elegance 
and  predilection,  and  Reed's  panegj^ic  as  to  the  highest 
culture  and  use  of  scholarly  English  in  its  composition, 
can  not  be  disputed. 

The  first  edition  in  quarto  was  soon  exhausted  and  it 
was  republished  in  quarto  by  the  same  printer,  Richard 
Field,  in  1594.  An  octavo  edition  was  printed  by  Field 
for  John  Harrison  in  1596,  and  Harrison  published  another 
in  1600.  According  to  Collier,  copies  exist  of  editions  of 
1602,  1616,  and  1620:  and  John  Wreittoun,  of  Edin- 
burgh, printed  an  edition  in  1627.  The  popularity  of  the 
poem  is  evidenced  not  only  by  these  repeated  publica- 
tions, but  also  by  the  frequent  mention  of  it  by  contem- 
porary wTiters.  It  is  alluded  to  in  Peele's  "Merry  Con- 
ceited Jests,"  published  in  1607,  and  in  the  same  year 
by  Thomas  Heywood  in  his  play  of  "  The  Fair  Maid  of  the 
Exchange."  Richard  Barnfield  noticed  it  in  1598;  and 
William  Barksted  mentions  it  in  1607  in  his  ''Myrrha, 
the  mother  of  Adonis."  In  the  ''Return  from  Parnassus" 
there  is  a  distinct  poetical  allusion  to  it.  The  poem  is 
prefaced  by  a  Latin  quotation  from  Ovid.  A  dedication 
also  is  prefixed,  as  follows: 

"  To  the  right  honourable  Henry  Wriothesly, 

Earl  of  Southampton  and  Baron  of  Tichfield. 
"Right  Honorable:  I  know  not  how  I  shall  offend  in 
dedicating  ni}'  unpolished  lines  to  your  lordship,  nor  how 
the  world  will  censure  me  for  choosing  so  strong  a  prop  to 
support  so  weak  a  burden ;  only,  if  j'our  honour  seem  but 
pleased,  I  account  myself  highly  praised,  and  vow  to  take 


256  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

advantage  of  all  idle  hours,  till  I  have  honoured  you  with 
some  graver  labour.  But  if  the  first  heir  of  my  invention 
prove  deformed,  I  shall  be  sorry  it  had  so  noble  a  god- 
father, and  never  after  ear  so  barren  a  land,  for  fear  it 
yield  me  still  so  bad  a  harvest.  I  leave  it  to  your  honour- 
able survey,  and  your  honour  to  your  heart's  content; 
which  I  wish  may  always  answer  your  own  wish  and  the 
world's  hopeful  expectation. 

"  Your  honour's  in  all  duty, 

.    "William  Shakespeare." 

In  order  to  form  an  opinion  as  to  the  authorship  of  the 
Venus  and  Adonis,  it  was  necessary  to  make  an  alphabeti- 
cal list  of  the  peculiar  words,  double-words,  sentences, 
and  turns  of  expression  to  be  found  in  the  poem,  and 
then  to  make  a  detailed  and  careful  examination  of  them. 
After  that  was  accomplished,  the  matter  of  a  comparison 
with  the  works  of  the  great  poets  of  that  era  confronted 
me,  and  I  made  a  list  of  them  for  that  purpose.  Very 
soon  I  found  upon  examination  that  the  names  of  very 
many  of  the  writers  whom  I  had  selected  could  be  elimi- 
nated, because  their  writings  were  not  of  the  amatory 
class.  I  took  it  for  granted  that  the  writer  had  learning 
as  well  as  poetic  fire,  for  "the  first  heir  of  my  invention" 
shows  thorough  scholarship.  The  list  therefore  gradually 
narrowed  down  to  a  select  few,  whom  I  have  arranged 
alphabetically,  namely — Francis  Bacon,  Francis  Beau- 
mont, George  Chapman,  Thomas  Dekker,  Michael  Drayton, 
Christopher  Marlowe,  John  Marston,  Thomas  Middleton, 
and  John  Webster.  These  were  all  learned  men,  with  the 
requisite  ability,  poetical  talent,  and  classical  attainments. 
They  were,  one  and  all,  intellectual  giants. 


THE   VENUS   AND   ADONIS   TEST,  257 

Before  proceeding  further,  I  ought  to  state  that  it 
would  be  unprofitable  as  well  as  uninteresting  to  the 
reader  to  give  the  detailed  statement  of  the  trial  tests 
which  resulted  in  the  failure  to  identify  any  one  or  more 
of  those  on  the  list  above  given,  as  the  author  of  the  poem. 
As  the  reader  and  I  have  no  particular  sympathy  for,  or 
prejudice  against,  any  one  of  these  poets,  it  will  suffice 
if  the  processes  are  set  out  and  the  methods  shown 
by  means  of  which  the  authorship  of  the  poem  was 
arrived  at. 

Francis  Beaumont  was  the  friend,  associate,  and 
mentor  of  Ben  Jonson  and  the  reputed  author  of  the 
amatory  poem  of  "Salmacis  and  Hermaphroditus " ;  but 
he  could  not  have  been  the  author  of  Venus  and  Adonis, 
for  he  was  too  young  in  the  year  1593  to  possess  the  ability 
to  write  poetry  at  all. 

Then  came  George  Chapman,  who  took  up  Marlowe's 
unfinished  poem  of  "Hero  and  Leander,"  beginning  as  to 
his  share  in  the  composition  with  the  third  Sestiad,  thereby 
making  it  a  complete  poem.  A  comparison  of  his  portion 
of  the  poem  with  my  index  showed  me  conclusively,  as  it 
will  show  the  reader,  that  he  could  not  have  been  the 
William  Shakespeare  of  the  Venus  and  Adonis.  One  short 
extract  from  the  poem  will  give  the  reader  who  is  not  able 
to  find  the  entire  poem  of  "  Hero  and  Leander"  clear  and 
convincing  proof  that  Chapman's  style  and  mode  of  expres- 
sion (beautiful  and  stately  as  it  is)  would  not  fit  the  author 
of  Venus  and  Adonis.  This  quotation  also  shows  the 
reader  that  Chapman  had  conferred  with  Marlowe  about 
the  unfinished  poem,  which  Chapman  felt  constrained, 
either  from  friendship  or  by  reason  of  a  direct  request 
from  Marlowe,  to  finish  after  Marlowe's  death. 


258  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

"  Now,  as  swift  as  time 
Doth  follow  motion,  find  the  eternal  clime 
Of  his  free  soul,  whose  living  subject  stood 
Up  to  his  chin  in  the  Pierian  flood, 
And  drunk  to  me  half  this  mussean  story, 
Inscribing  it  in  deathless  memory. 
Confer  with  it  and  make  my  pledge  as  deep 
That  neither's  draught  be  consecrate  to  sleep 
Tell  it  how  much  his  late  desires  I  tender, 
If  yet  it  know  not,  and  to  light  surrender 
My  soul's  dark  offspring,  willing  it  should  die 
To  love,  to  passion  and  society." 

Then  there  was  John  Marston,  who  wrote  the  love  poem 
of  Pygmalion  after  the  manner  of  Venus  and  Adonis.  But 
his  poem,  contrasted  with  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  is  as 
cold  as  the  statue  which  Pygmalion  chiseled,  before  it 
was  warmed  into  life  for  him.  Two  stanzas  from  the  poem 
of  Marston  will  clearly  illustrate  the  point: 

''  Pygmalion,  whose  high  love-hating  mind 
Disdained  to  yield  servile  affection 
Of  amorous  suit  to  any  woman-kind, 
Knowing  their  wants  and  men's  perfection; 
Yet  love  at  length  forced  him  to  know  his  fate. 
And  love  the  shade  whose  substance  he  did  hate. 

For  having  wrought  in  ivory 

So  fair  an  image  of  a  woman's  feature, 

That  never  yet  proudest  mortality 

Could  show  so  rare  and  beauteous  a  creature. 
Unless  my  mistress'  all-excelling  face 
Which  gives  to  beauty  beauty's  only  grace." 

As  to  Beaumont,  Chapman,  and  Marston,  I  will  add 
that,  while  every  student  of  English  literature  will  admit 


THE    VENUS    AND    ADONIS    TEST.  259 

their  ability  as  well  as  the  greatness  of  their  poetical  talent 
and  classical  attainments,  they  nowhere  betray  them- 
selves in  any  part  of  their  works  as  originators  or  even 
imitators  of  the  words,  phrases,  and  peculiar  turns  of 
expression  in  the  Venus  and  Adonis. 

Christopher  Marlowe  then  came  in  his  turn.  The  sub- 
ject was  in  his  line  of  thought  and  worthy  of  his  "mighty 
line."     It  was  Marlowe,  as  Drayton  beautifully  puts  it,  who 

"  Bathed  in  the  Thespian  spring, 
Had  in  him  those  brave  translunary  things 
That  the  first  poets  had.     His  raptures  were 
All  air  and  fire,  which  made  his  verses  clear," 

His  leading  motive,  as  Symonds  says,  was  the  love  or 
lust  of  unattainable  things.  He  deserves  in  every  way, 
as  a  prince  of  poets,  the  panegyric  which  Bullen  has 
bestowed  upon  him: 

"  Never  was  a  poet  fired  with  a  more  intense  aspiration 
for  ideal  beauty  and  ideal  power.  As  some  adventurous 
Greek  of  old  might  have  sailed  away,  with  warning  voices 
in  his  ears,  past  the  pillars  of  Hercules  in  quest  of  fabled 
islands  beyond  the  sun,  so  Marlowe  started  on  his  lonely 
course,  careless  of  tradition  and  restraint,  resolved  to  seek 
and  find  some  world  far  from  ours,  where  the  secret  springs 
of  knowledge  should  be  opened  and  he  should  touch  the 
lips  of  beauty." 

A  specimen  of  his  style  may  be  found  in  the  following 
lines  copied  from  his  Faustus: 

"  Was  this  the  face  that  launched  a  thousand  ships 
And  burnt  the  topless  towers  of  Ilium? 
Sweet  Helen,  make  me  immortal  with  a  kiss. 
Her  lips  suck  forth  my  soul ;  see  where  it  flies ! 


260  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Come,  Helen,  come,  give  me  my  soul  again. 
Here  will  I  dwell,  for  heaven  is  on  these  lips. 
And  all  is  dross  that  is  not  Helena. 
0,  thou  art  fairer  than  the  evening  air. 
Clad  in  the  beauty  of  a  thousand  stars ; 
Brighter  art  thou  than  flaming  Jupiter 
When  he  appeared  to  hapless  Semele; 
More  lovely  than  the  monarch  of  the  sky 
In  wanton  Arethusa's  azure  arms." 

But  Marlowe  died'  on  the  first  day  of  June,  1593,  and 
hence  the  Venus  and  Adonis  could  not  have  been  written 
by  him,  since  the  writer  thereof  declares  in  his  dedication 
that  the  poem  with  its  unpolished  lines  is  "the  first  heir 
of  my  invention."  Since  the  poem  was  registered  on 
April  18,  1593,  it  could  not  possibly  have  been  a  poem 
of  Marlowe,  for  he  had  written  many  poems  and  plays 
previous  to  that  date.  It  could  not  have  been  the  first 
heir  of  his  invention. 

The  same  tests  which  were  applied  to  Beaumont,  Chap- 
man, Marlowe,  and  Marston  were  applied  also  to  Thomas 
Middleton  and  John  Webster,  and  with  the  same  result, 
thus  narrowing  the  number  of  contestants  to  three — 
Francis  Bacon,  Thomas  Dekker,  and  Michael  Drayton. 

It  is  a  matter  to  be  considered  as  to  the  Venus  and 
Adonis  as  well  as  the  poem  called  Tarquin  and  Lucrece 
that  although  they  were  apparently  dedicated  by  a  person 
whose  name  was  very  much  like  that  of  William  Shaksper, 
yet,  in  the  Folio  of  1623,  they  were  entirely  unnoticed  and 
omitted  by  Heminge  and  Condell,  who  professed  that  they 
were  the  guardians  for  Shaksper's  orphan  productions  and 
that  it  was  their  province  to  gather  his  works. 

If  the  syndicate  of  publishers  named  in  the  Folio  pro- 
cured the  plays  from  the  two  players,  the  conclusion  would 


THE   VENUS   AND   ADONIS  TEST.  261 

be  natural  that  they  gathered  them  together  as  the  prop- 
erty of  Wilham  Shaksper,  the  theatrical  manager,  whose 
rights  in  them  were  as  absolute  and  good  as  the  title  to 
Henslowe's  plays  was  in  him.  That  is  to  say,  if  they  were 
bought  from  the  playwriters  and  fully  paid  for,  and 
Heminge  and  Condell  took  the  trouble  to  collect  them, 
that  would  account  for  the  failure  to  include  the  two  poems 
among  the  works  of  Shaksper,  since  he  had  never  purchased 
the  poems  from  any  one. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

VENUS  AND  ADONIS  PHRASES  REPEATED  IN  THE  PLAYS. 

"Good  phrases  are  surely,  and  ever  were  very  commendable." 

—Second  Henry  IV,  iii,  2. 

To  enable  the  reader  to  judge  for  himself  as  to  the 
resemblance  between  the  words  and  phrases  in  the  poem 
of  Venus  and  Adonis  and  the  plays  which  Meres  enumer- 
ates as  written  by  Shakespeare  before  the  year  1598,  I 
cite  the  following  examples  of  similarity  between  the  poem 
and  the  plays.  They  should  be  carefully  examined  and 
scrutinized  by  the  studious  reader.  I  am  taking  it  for 
granted,  as  heretofore  stated,  that  the  Venus  and  Adonis 
was  written  by  one  man  and  one  man  only,  and  as  I  main- 
tain the  proposition  that  the  plays  embody  the  words  and 
thoughts  of  several  writers,  the  discovery  of  the  writer  of 
the  poem  will  greatly  aid  in  leading  us  to  the  discovery  of 
the  man  who  was  the  true  Shakespeare.  To  avoid  the 
charge  of  tediousness,  I  will  cite  only  enough  of  resembling 
words  and  phrases  to  satisfy  the  reader  that  the  author  of 
the  poem  was  a  principal  writer  of  the  plays. 

I  first  give  the  phrase  or  word  to  be  particularly  noted, 
and  then  under  it,  the  resembling  sentences. 

ABOVE    COMPARE. 

"The  field's  chief  flower,  sweet  above  compare." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  8. 

"Which  she  hath  praised  him  with  above  compare." 

— Roiueo  and  Juliet,  iii,  5. 
ALL   COMPACT   OF. 

•'Love  is  a  spirit  all  compact  of  fire." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  149. 


VENUS  AND  ADONIS  PHRASES  REPEATED  IN  PLAYS.    263 

"Are  of  imagination  all  compact." 

—A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  iv,  1. 

"If  he,  compact  of  jaw,  grows  musical." 

—As  You  Like  It,  ii,  7. 
ALL    SWOLLEN. 

"All  swol'n  with  chafing,  down  Adonis  sits." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  325. 

"All  swol'n  and  ulcerous,  pitiful  to  the  eye." 

—Macbeth,  iv,  3. 
AN   EMPTY   EAGLE. 

"Even  as  an  empty  eagle  sharp  by  fast." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  55. 

"Wert  not  all  one,  an  empty  eagle  were  set." 

—Third  Henry  VI,  iii,  1. 

"  And  like  an  empty  eagle, 
Tire  on  the  flesh  of  me  and  of  my  son." 

-Third  Henry  VI,  iii,  1. 

ANNOY  (as  a  noun). 
"But  now  I  liv'd  and  life  was  death's  annoy." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  497. 

"Good  angels  guard  thee  from  the  boar's  annoy." 

-Richard  III,  v,  3. 
ANTHEM. 

"  Her  heavy  anthem  still  concludes  in  woe." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  839. 

"As  ending  anthem  of  my  endless  dolor." 

—Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  iii.  1. 
ANY   JOT. 

"  If  springing  things  be  any  jot  diminished." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  417. 

"Than  in  possession  any  jot  of  pleasure." 

—Third  Henry  VI,  iv,  2. 
AT    RANDOM. 

"  But  hatefully  at  random  dost  thou  hit." 

-Venus  and  Adonis,  940. 


264  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

"And  the  great  care  of  goods  at  random  left." 

—Comedy  of  Errors,  i,  1. 

''I  writ  at  random,  very  doubtfully." 

—Two  Geiitlemeu  of  Verona,  ii,  1. 
BATE-BREEDING. 

"This  sour  informer,  this  bate-breeding  spy," 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  6.55, 

"Breeds  no  bate  v^ith  telling  of  discreet  stories." 

— Second  Henry  IV,  ii,  4. 
BATTERED    SHIELD. 

"His  battered  shield,  his  uncontrolled  crest." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  104. 

"Than  foeman's  marks  upon  his  battered  shield." 

—Titus  Andronicus,  iv,  1. 
BEPAINTED. 

"Whose  pretty  mouth  bepainted  all  with  red." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  901. 

"Else  would  a  maiden  blush  bepaint  my  cheek." 

—Romeo  and  Juliet,  ii,  2, 
BUT   ALL   IN   VAIN. 

"  But  all  in  vain,  good  queen,  it  will  not  be." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  607. 

"But  all  in  vain  are  these  mean  obsequies." 

—Second  Henry  VI,  iii,  2. 

"  But  all  in  vain,  they  had  no  heart  to  fight." 

—Third  Henry  VI,  iii,  2, 

"Till  Hymen's  torch  be  lighted,  but  in  vain." 

—The  Tempest,  iv,  1. 
BY    SUBTILTY. 

"Or  as  the  fox,  which  lives  by  subtilty." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  675. 

"  Be  it  by  gins,  by  snares,  by  subtilty." 

—Second  Henry  VI,  iii,  1. 


VENUS  AND  ADOXIS  PHRASES  REPEATED  IN  PLAYS.     265 


CATERPILLARS. 

"As  caterpillars  do  the  tender  leaves." 

— Venus  and  Adonis,  798. 

"And  caterpillars  eat  my  leaves  away." 

—Second  Henrj'  VI,  ii,  4. 


CHAFES    HER    LIPS. 

"He  chafes  her  lips,  a  thousand  ways  he  seeks." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  477. 

"Fain  would  I  go  to  chafe  his  paly  lips." 

—Second  Henry  VI,  iii,  2. 


CHAOS   COME   AGAIN. 

"And  beauty  dead,  black  chaos  comes  again." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  1020. 

"And  when  I  love  thee  not,  chaos  is  come  again." 

—Othello,  iii,  3. 


CHEERING   UP. 

"Till  cheering  up  her  senses  all  dismay 'd." 

-Venus  and  Adonis,  996. 

"Went  through  the  army,  cheering  up  the  soldiers." 

—Richard  III,  v,  3. 
CHURLISH   DRUM. 

"Scorning  her  churlish  drmii  and  ensign  red." 

— Venus  and  Adonis,  107. 

"The  interruption  of  their  churlish  drums." 

—King  John,  11, 1. 
CLOSURE. 

"  Into  the  quiet  closure  of  my  breast." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  782. 

"Within  the  guilty  closure  of  thy  w^alls." 

-Richard  III,  ill,  3. 


COAL-BLACK. 

"And  coal-black  clouds,  that  shadow  heaven's  light." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  533. 


266  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

''That  comes  in  likeness  of  a  coal-black  Moor." 

—Titus  Andronicufl,  ili,  2. 

"Coal-black  is  better  than  another  hue." 

—Titus  Andronicus,  iv,  2. 
COLD    FAULT. 

"  With  much  ado  the  cold  fault  cleanly  out." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  694. 

"Saw'st  thou  not,  boy,  how  Silver  made  it  good 
At  the  hedge  corner  in  the  coldest  fault?" 

—Taming  of  the  Shrew,  Ind.,  20. 
COMES   STEALING. 

"How  she  came  stealing  to  the  waward  boy." 

-Venus  and  Adonis,  344. 

"That  time  comes  stealing  on  by  day  and  night." 

—Comedy  of  Errors,  iv,  1. 
CONGEALED    BLOOD. 

"And  stains  his  face  with  her  congealed  blood." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  1122. 

"Thy  tears  would  wash  the  cold  congealed  blood." 

-Third  Henry  VI,  i,  1. 
COPE    HIM. 

"They  all  strain  courtesy  who  shall  cope  him  first." 

—Venus  and  .\donis,  888. 

"They  say  he  yesterday  coped  Hector  in  the  battle." 

— Troilus  and  Cressida,  i,  2. 
COPIOUS. 

"Their  copious  stories  oftentimes  begun." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  845. 

"I  hear  his  drum;  be  copious  in  exclaims." 

—Richard  m,  iv,  4. 

CURST  (meaning  fierce). 
"Finding  their  enemy  to  be  so  curst." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  887. 


VENUS  AND  ADONIS  PHRASES  REPEATED  IN  PLAYS.    267 

"They  are  never  curst  but  when  they  are  hungry." 

—The  Winter's  Tale,  iii,  3. 

"In  faith,  she's  too  curst." 

—Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  ii,  1. 
DEFEATURE. 

"And  pure  perfection  with  impure  defeature." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  736, 

"Then  is  he  the  ground  of  my  defeature." 

—Comedy  of  Errors,  ii,  1. 
DEW-BEDABBLED. 

"Then  shalt  thou  see  the  dew-bedabbled  wretch." 

-Venus  and  Adonis,  703. 

"Bedabbled  with  the  dew  and  torn  with  briars." 

—A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  iii,  2. 
DOTETH. 

"  Dumbly  she  passions,  frantickly  she  doteth." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  1059. 

"So  much  she  doteth  on  her  Mortimer." 

—First  Henry  IV,  iii,  1. 
EAR   THE    LAND. 

"And  never  after  ear  so  barren  a  land." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  Ded. 

"  And  let  them  go  to  ear  the  land." 

—King  John,  iii,  2. 

"He  that  ears  my  land." 

-All's  Well  that  Ends  Well,  i,  3. 
ENGINE   OF   HER  THOUGHTS. 

"Once  more  the  engine  of  her  thoughts  began." 

-Venus  aud  Adonis,  367. 

"0!  that  delightful  engine  of  her  thoughts." 

— Titas  Andronicus,  iii,  1. 
EXCEEDS   COMMISSION. 

"Chiefly  in  love,  whose  leave  exceeds  commission." 

— Venus  aud  Adunis,  568. 

"Let  not  her  penance  exceed  the  King's  commission." 

—Second  Henry  VI,  ii,  4. 


268  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

FAIR    BREEDER. 

"Of  the  fair  breeder  that  is  standing  by." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  367. 

"  Among  the  fairest  breeders  of  our  cUme." 

—Titus  Andronicus,  iii,  1. 
FAIR    FALL. 

"Fair  fall  the  wit  that  can  so  well  defend  her." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  472. 

"Fair  fall  the  face  it  covers." 

—Love's  Labor's  Lost,  ii,  L 
FIE,    FIE. 

"  Fie,  fie,  fond  love,  thou  art  so  full  of  fears." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  533. 

"Fie,  fie,  he  says,  you  crush  me,  let  me  go." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  6U. 

"Fie,  fie,  on  all  tired  jades." 

—Taming  of  the  Shrew,  iv,  1. 

"Fie,  fie,  unknit  that  threatening,  unkind  brow." 

—Taming  of  the  Shrew,  v,  2. 

"Fie,  fie  upon  her." 

— Troilus  and  Cressida,  iv,  5. 
FLEET-FOOT   ROE. 

"Or  as  the  fleet-foot  roe  that's  tired  with  chasing." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  560. 

"As  breathed  stags,  aye,  fleeter  than  the  roe." 

—Taming  ot  the  Shrew,  Ind. 

"  Whip  to  our  tents  as  roes  run  o'er  the  land." 

—Love's  Labor's  Lost,  v,  2. 
FLYING   HARE. 

"Having  the  fearful,  flying  hare  in  sight." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  674. 

"Uncouple  at  the  timorous  flying  hare." 

—Third  Henry  VI,  ii,  5. 


VENUS  AND  ADONIS  PHRASES  REPEATED  IN  PLAYS.     269 
FULL   PERFECTION. 

"Whose  full  perfection  all  the  world  amazes." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  634. 

"Whose  fullness  of  perfection  lies  in  him." 

—King  John,  ii,  1. 
GLISTER   LIKE. 

"  His  eyes  which  scornfully  ghster  like  fire." 

— Venus  and  Adonis,  275. 

"Away  and  glister  like  the  god  of  war." 

—King  John,  v,  1. 
GUISE. 

"This  was  thy  father's  guise." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  1177. 

"This  is  her  very  guise." 

—Macbeth,  v,  1. 
HARSH   SOUNDING. 

"Melodious  discord,  heavenly  tune,  harsh  sounding." 

-Venus  and  Adonis,  431. 

"To  whom  he  sung  in  rude,  harsh-sounding  rhyme." 

-King  John,  iv,  2. 
heart's   ATTORNEY    (the  tOUgUc). 

"But  when  the  heart's  attorney  once  is  mute." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  335. 

"Windy  attorneys  to  their  client's  woes." 

—Richard  III,  iv,  4. 

heart's  content. 
"And  your  honour  ,to  your  heart's  content." 

— Venus  and  Adonis,  Ded. 

"Such  is  the  fullness  of  my  heart's  content." 

—Second  Henry  VI,  iii,  2. 

"Then  though  my  heart's  content  from  love  doth  bear," 

—Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  i,  1. 


270  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 


I   ACCOUNT   MYSELF. 

"I  account  myself  highly  pleased." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  Ded. 

"0,  thou,  whose  captain  I  account  myself." 

—Richard  III,  v.  2. 
I   MUST   CONFESS. 

"Then,  gentle  shadow,  truth  I  must  confess." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  1001. 

''Myself  am  struck  in  years,  I  must  confess." 

—Taming  of  the  Shrew,  ii,  1. 

"I  must  confess  your  offer  is  the  best." 

—Taming  of  the  Shrew,  ii,  1. 
I    PROPHESY, 

"  Since  thou  art  dead,  lo,  here  I  prophesy." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  1135. 

"I  prophesy  the  fearfulest  time  to  thee." 

-Richard  III,  iii,  4. 

"And  here  I  prophesy  the  brawl  to-day." 

-First  Henry  VI,  ii,  4. 

"And  thus  I  prophesy  that  many  thousand." 

—Third  Henry  VI,  i,  6. 
IDLE    HOURS, 

"And  VOW  to  take  advantage  of  all  idle  hours." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  Ded. 

"Which  waste  of  idle  hours  hath  quite  thrown  down," 

—Richard  II,  iii,  4. 
IDLE   THEME. 

"And  leave  this  idle  theme,  this  bootless  chat." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  422. 

"And  this  weak  and  idle  theme." 

—A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  v,  2. 
IMAGINARY. 

"All  is  imaginary,  she  doth  prove." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  597. 

"  The  imaginary  relish  is  so  sweet." 

— Troilus  and  Cressida,  iii,  2. 


VENUS  AND  ADONIS  PHRASES  REPEATED  IN  PLAYS.    271 

IN   DESPITE. 

"Wherein  she  framed  thee  in  high  heaven's  despite." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  721. 

''Therefore,  despite  of  fruitless  chastity." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  750. 

"In  despite  of  the  flesh  and  blood." 

—Taming  of  the  Stirew,  Ind. 
IN   SPITE   OF. 

"And  so  in  spite  of  death,  thou  dost  survive." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  173. 

"In  spite  of  pope  or  dignities  of  church." 

—First  Henry  VI,  i,  3. 

"In  spite  of  us  or  aught  that  we  could  do." 

—First  Henry  VI,  i,  5. 
IT   CAN   NOT   BE. 

"  If  he  be  dead,  0  no,  it  can  not  be." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  637. 

"It  can  not  be,  it  is  impossible." 

—Love's  Labor's  Lost,  v,  2. 

"It  can  not  be,  but  he  was  murdered  here." 

—Second  Henry  VI,  iii,  2. 

"It  can  not  be,  but  I  am  pigeon  livered." 

—Hamlet,  ii,  2. 
KEEP   HIS   REVELS. 

"Love  keeps  his  revels  where  there  are  but  twain," 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  123. 

"The  king  doth  keep  his  revels  here  to-night." 

—A  Midsummer  Nigiit's  Dream,  ii,  1. 
KIND    EMBRACEMENTS. 

"Beating  his  kind  embracements  with  her  heels." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  312. 

"And  then  with  kind  embracements,  tempting  kisses." 

—Taming  of  the  Shrew,  Ind. 

"Drew  me  from  kind  embracements  of  my  spouse." 

—The  Comedy  of  Errors,  i,  1. 


272  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 


LIVELIHOOD. 

''The  precedent  of  pith  and  hvehhood." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  26. 

"Takes   all   livelihood   from   her   cheek." 

—All's  Well  that  Ends  Well,  i,  1. 
LOUD   ALARUMS. 

"Anon,  then  loud  alarums  he  doth  hear." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  700. 

"To  endure  her  loud  alarums." 

—Taming  of  the  Shrew,  i,  1. 
LUSTY,    YOUNG. 

"A  breeding  jennet,  lusty,  young  and  proud." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  260. 

"But  lusty,  young  and  cheerly  drawing  breath." 

—King  John,  i,  3. 
MAKE   USE. 

"Make  use  and  time,  let  not  advantage  slip." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  129. 

"Make  use  and  fair  advantage  of  his  days." 

—Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  ii,  4. 
MAKES   AMAIN. 

"  Sick-thoughted  Venus  makes  amain  unto  him." 

— Venus  and  Adonis,  5. 

"Two  ships  from  far  making  amain  unto  us." 

— The  Comedy  of  Errors,  i,  1. 
MEAGRE. 

"Hard-favored  tyrant,  ugly,  meagre,  lean." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  781. 

"Of  ashy  semblance,  meagre,  pale  and  bloodless." 

—Second  Henry  VI,  iii,  2. 

mermaid's  voice. 
"Thy  mermaid's  voice  hath  done  me  double  wrong." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  429. 


VENUS  AND  ADONIS  PHRASES  REPEATED  IN  PLAYS.     273 

"Bewitching  like   the   wanton   mermaid's   song." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  777. 

"0!  train  me  not,  sweet  mermaid,  with  thy  note." 

—The  Comedy  of  Errors,  iii,  2. 

•''  I'll  stop  mine  ears  against  the  mermaid's  song." 

—The  Comedy  of  Errors,  iii,  2. 
MOIST    HAND. 

"My  smooth  moist  hand,  were  it  with  thy  hand  felt." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  143. 

"Give  me  your  hand.     This  hand  is  moist,  my  lady." 

—Othello,  iii,  4. 
NAUGHT    ESTEEMS. 

"  Alas,  he  naught  esteems  that  face  of  thine." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  631. 

"And  naught  esteems  my  aged  eloquence." 

—Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  iii,  1. 
NIGHT    WANDERERS. 

"  Or  'stonish'd  as  night  wanderers  often  are." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  825. 

"Mislead  night  wanderers,  laughing  at  their  harm." 

—A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  ii,  1. 
NO   MARVEL. 

"Therefore  no  marvel,  though  thy  horse  be  gone." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  390. 

"Therefore  no  marvel,  though  Demetrius  do." 

—A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  ii.  3. 
NOT   GROSS   TO   SINK. 

"Not  gross  to  sink,  but  light  and  will  aspire." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  150. 

"Let  love,  being  light,  be  drowned  if  she  sink." 

—The  Comedy  of  Errors,  iii,  2. 
O,    FAIREST    MOVER. 

"0,  fairest  mover  on  this  mortal  round." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  368. 

"0,  thou  eternal  mover  of  the  heavens." 

—Second  Henry  VI,  iii.  3. 


274  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

O   JOVE. 

"0  Jove,  quoth  she,  how  much  a  fool  was  I." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  1015. 

"Ah  me,  says  one,  0  Jove,  the  other  cries." 

—Love's  Labor's  Lost,  iv,  3. 
OBDURATE,    FLINTY. 

"Art  thou  obdurate,  flinty,  hard  as  steel." 

— Venus  and  Adonis,  199. 

"Thou  stern,  obdurate,  flinty,  rough,  remorseless." 

—Third  Henry  VI,  i,  4. 
OF    TEEN. 

"  My  face  is  full  of  shame,  my  heart  of  teen." 

—Venus  and  Adonis.  608. 

"Of  sighs,  of  groans,  of  sorrow  and  of  teen." 

—Love's  Labor's  Lost,  iv,  3. 
OLD,    WRINKLED. 

"  Were  I  hard  favor'd,  foul  or  wrinkled  old." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  133. 

"This  is  a   man,   old,   wTuikled,   faded,   withered." 

—Taming  of  the  Shrew,  It,  5. 
PEEVISH,    SULLEN,    FROWARD. 

"Or  like  the  froward  infant,  stilled  with  dandling." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  562. 

"No  trust  me,  she  is  peevish,  sullen,  froward." 

—Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  iii,  1. 

"And  when  she's  froward,   peevish,   sullen,   sour." 

—Taming  of  the  Shrew,  v,  2. 
PITCHY. 

"So  did  the  merciless  and  pitchy  night." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  821 . 

"But  I  will  sort  a  pitchy  day  for  thee." 

—Third  Henry  VI,  i,  6. 


VENUS  AND  ADONIS  PHRASES  REPEATED  IN  PLAYS.    275 


PLUCK   DOWN. 

"  Pluck  down  the  rich,  enrich  the  poor  with  treasure." 

— Venus  and  Adonis,  1156. 

"Ajax  employed,   plucks  do\\Ti  Achilles'   plume." 

— Troilus  and  Cressida,  i,  3. 
PRIMROSE    BANK. 

"Witness  this  primrose  bank,  whereon  I  lie." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  151. 

"Upon  faint  primrose  beds,  were  wont  to  lie." 

—A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  i,  1. 
PURPLE   TEARS. 

"  With  purple  tears  that  his  wound  wept,  was  drench'd." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  1054. 

"0,  may  such  purple  tears  be  always  shed." 

—Third  Henry  VI,  i,  6. 
RAGING   MAD. 

"It  shall  be  raging  mad  and  silly  mild." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  lUo. 

""Where  from  thy  sight,  I  should  be  raging  mad." 

— Second  Henry  VI,  iii,  2. 
RECURES. 

"  A  smile  recures  the  wounding  of  a  frown." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  465. 

"Which  to  recure,  we  heartily  solicit." 

— Richard  III.  iii,  7. 
SCARCITY. 

"That  on  the  earth  would  breed  a  scarcity." 

— Venus  and  Adonis,  1150. 

"Now  heaven  forbid  such  scarcity  of  youth." 

—Troilus  and  Cressida,  i,  3. 
SEAL-MANUAL. 

"Set  thy  seal-manual  on  my  wax-red  lips." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  516. 

"There  is  my  gage,  the  manual  seal  of  death." 

—Richard  II,  iv,  1. 


276  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 


SET   A    GLOSS. 

"Set  gloss  on  the  rose,  smell  to  the  violet." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  936. 

"To  set  a  gloss  upon  his  bold  intent." 

—First  Henry  VI,  iv,  1. 
SILLY   LAMB. 

"  And  never  fright  the  silly  lamb  that  day." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  1098. 

"To  shepherds  looking  on  their  silly  sheep." 

—Third  Henry  VI,  ii,  5. 
SPEND   THEIR   MOUTHS. 

"Then  do  they  spend  their  mouths:  Echo  replies." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  695. 

"  For  coward  dogs 
Must  spend  their  mouths  when  what  they  seem  to 
threaten." 

—Henry  V,  ii,  4. 
STAIN    TO. 

"Stain  to  all  nymphs,  more  lovely  than  a  man." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  9. 

"Stain  to  thy  countrymen,  thou  hear'st  thy  doom." 

—Henry  VIII,  iv,  1. 
STRIKE    DUMB. 

"Strike  the  wise  dumb  and  teach  the  fool  to  speak." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  1146. 

"Deep  shame  hath  struck  me  dumb." 

—King  John,  iv,  2. 
SUCH-LIKE. 

"In  such-like  circumstance  with  such-like  sport." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  844, 

"And  I,  for  such-like  petty  crimes  as  these." 

—Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  iv,  I. 

"Youth,  liberality,  and  suchlike." 

— Troilus  and  Cressida,  i,  2. 


VENUS  AND  ADONIS  PHRASES  REPEATED  IN  PLAYS.     277 

"And  even  with  such-like  valor." 

—The  Tempest,  iii.  3. 

"These  as  I  learn  and  such-like  toys  as  these." 

—Richard  in,  i,  1. 

"  And  many  such  like." 

—Hamlet,  v,  2. 
SUFFERED. 

"Else  suffered,  it  will  set  the  heart  on  fire." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  388. 

"Which  being  suffered,  rivers  can  not  quench." 

—Third  Henry  VI,  iv,  8. 

SUSPECT  (as  a  noun). 
"Her  rash  suspect,  she  doth  extenuate." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  1106. 

"He  lived  from  all  attainder  of  suspect." 

—Richard  IH,  iii,  5. 

"And  draw  within  the  compass  of  suspect." 

—The  Comedy  of  Errors,  iii,  1. 
SWEATING  PALM. 

"With  this,  she  seizeth  on  his  sweating  palm." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  25. 

"Nay,  if  an  oily  palm  be  not  a  fruitful  prognostication." 

—Antony  and  Cleopatra,  i,  2. 
SWEET    BOY. 

"Sweet  boy,  she  says,  this  night  I'll  waste  in  sorrow." 

-Venus  and  Adonis,  583. 

"And  kneel,  sweet  boy,  the  Roman  Hector's  hope." 

—Titus  Andronicus,  iv,  1. 

"My  heart,  sweet  boy,  shall  be  thy  sepulchre." 

—Third  Henry  VI,  ii,  5. 
TAKE    TRUCE. 

"Till   he   take   truce   with   her   contending   tears." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  82. 

"Could  not  take  truce  with  the  unruly  spleen." 

— Romeo  and  Juliet,  ii,  1. 


278  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 


TENDER   HORNS. 

"Or,  as  the  snail,  whose  tender  horns  being  hit." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  1033. 

"Than    are    the    tender   horns    of   cockled   snails." 

—Love's  Labor's  Lost,  iv,  3. 
THE    VERY    LIST. 

"Now  is  she  in  the  very  lists  of  love." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  595. 

"The  very  list,  the  utmost  bound." 

-First  Henry  IV,  iv.  1. 
THROBBING   HEART. 

"My  throbbing  heart  shall  rock  thee,  day  and  night." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  1186. 

"Here  may  his  head  lie  on  my  throbbing  breast." 

Second  Henry  VI,  iv,  4. 
TIMOROUS   YELPING. 

"Even  so  the  timorous  yelping  of  the  hounds." 

-Venus  and  Adonis,  881. 

"  A  little  herd  of  England's  timorous  deer 
Mazed  with  a  yelping  kennel  of  French  curs." 

—First  Henry  VI,  iv,  2. 
TO   TAKE   ADVANTAGE   OF. 

"And  VOW   to  take   advantage   of  all  idle  hours." 

— Venus  aud  Adonis,  Ded. 

"Take  all  the  swift  advantage  of  the  hours." 

—Richard  III,  iv,  1. 

"Speed  thou  to  take  advantage  of  the  field." 

—King  John,  ii,  1. 
TO   THE   DISPOSING   OF. 

"To  the  disposing  of  her  troubled  brain." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  1040. 

"To  the  disposing  of  the  Cardinal." 

—King  John,  v,  7. 


VENUS  AND   ADONIS   PHRASES   REPEATED  IN   PLAYS.    279 


TREMBLING   ECSTASY. 

"Thus  stands  she  in  a  trembling  ecstasy." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  895. 

"Mark  how  he  trembles  in  his  ecstasy." 

—The  Comedy  of  Errors,  iv,  4. 
TREMBLING   JOINTS. 

"I  fear'd  thy  fortune,  and  my  joints  did  tremble." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  642. 

"A  chilling  sweat  o'erruns  my   trembling  joints." 

—Titus  Andronicus,  ii,  3. 
TRODDEN    ON. 

"For  misery  is  trodden  on  by  many." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  707. 

"  For  though  the  camomile,  the  more  it  is  trodden  on, 

—First  Henry  IV,  ii,  4. 

"The  smallest  worm  will  turn,  being  trodden  on." 

—Third  Henry  VI,  ii,  2. 

"Where  stained  nobility  is  trodden  on." 

—First  Henry  IV,  v,  4. 


)} 


TRUE   MEN   THIEVES. 

"Rich  preys  make  true  men  thieves:  so  do  thy  lips." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  724. 

"The  thieves  have  bound  the  true  men." 

—First  Henry  IV,  ii,  3. 
TWENTY  THOUSAND. 

"If  love  have  lent  you  twenty  thousand  tongues." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  775. 

"And  in  possession,  twenty  thousand  crowns." 

—Taming  of  the  Shrew,  ii,  1. 

"Unto   their  losses,   twenty   thousand   crowns." 

—Taming  of  the  Shrew,  v,  2. 
TWENTY   TIMES. 

"And  twenty  echoes,  twenty  times  cry  so." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  834. 


280  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

"  But  twenty  times  so  much  upon  my  wife." 

—Taming  of  the  Shrew,  v,  2. 

"Not  once  or  twice,  but  twenty  times  you  have." 

—The  Comedy  of  Errors,  iii,  2. 
UNAPT   TO. 

"With  leaden  appetite,  unapt  to  toy." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  34. 

"I  am  a  soldier,  and  unapt  to  weep." 

—First  Henry  VI,  v,  3. 

"Unapt  to  toil  and  trouble  in  the  world." 

—The  Comedy  of  Errors,  iii,  2. 
UNTREAD   AGAIN. 

"She   treads   the   path   that   she   imtreads   again." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  908. 

■'Where    is    the   horse    that   doth   un tread   again." 

—The  Merchant  of  Venice,  ii,  6. 
VARIABLE    PASSIONS. 

"Variable  passions  throng  her  constant  woe." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  967. 

'I  never  heard  a  passion  so  confus'd,  so  strange,  out- 
rageous, and  so  variable." 

—The  Merchant  of  Venice,  ii,  8. 

WAX  (reference  to). 
"And   yields   at    last   to    every   light    impression." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  566. 

""Bears  no  impression  of  the  thing  it  was." 

—Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  ii,  4. 
WAYW^ARD    BOY. 

"How   she   came   stealing   to    the   wayward   boy." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  344. 

"This  whimpled,  whining,  purblind  wayward  boy." 

—Love's  Labor's  Lost,  iii,  1. 
WEAL   OR   WOE. 

"Thy  weal  and  woe  are  both  of  them  extremes." 

— Veniis  and  Adonis,  987. 


VENUS  AND  ADONIS  PHRASES  REPEATED  IN  PLAYS.      281 

"Aiid  will  be  partner  of  your  weal  or  woe." 

—First  Henry  VI,  iii,  2. 

"  Brief  sounds  determine  of  my  weal  or  woe." 

—Romeo  and  Juliet,  iii,  2. 


WHOSE    HOLLOW   W'OMB. 

^' Whose  hollow  womb  resounds  like  heaven's  thunder." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  268. 

''Whose  hollow  womb  inherits  naught  but  bones." 

—Richard  II,  ii,  1. 


WITHIN    HIS    DANGER. 

''Come  not  within  his  danger  by  thy  will." 

-Venus  and  Adonis,  639. 

"You  stand  within  his  danger,  do  you  not?" 

—Twelfth  Night,  v,  1. 


WITNESS   THIS. 

''  Witness  this  primrose  bank,  whereon  I  lie." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  151. 

''Witness  this  army  of  such  mass  and  charge." 

—Hamlet,  iv,  4. 


WORSE   AND   WORSE. 

"  Yom-  treatise  makes  me  like  you  worse  and  worse." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  774. 

"Worse  and  worse,  she  will  not  come,  0,  vile." 

—Taming  of  the  Shrew,  v,  2. 

"Worse  and  worse." 

—Othello,  ii,  1. 

"I  pray  you,  speak  not,  he  grows  worse  and  worse." 

—Macbeth,  iii,  4. 


WIRINGS    HER    BY    THE    NOSE. 

"He  wrings  her  by  the  nose,  he  strikes  her  on  the 
cheek." 

—Venus  and  Adonis,  481. 

"Rear  up  his  body,  wTing  him  by  the  nose." 

— Second  Henry  VI,  iii,  2. 


282  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

The  striking  resemblances  above  set  out  are  chiefly 
found  in  the  plays  which  Meres,  in  his  "Palladis  Tamia" 
thus  mentions: 

"As  Plautus  and  Seneca  are  accounted  the  best  for 
comedy  and  tragedy  among  the  Latins,  so  Shakespeare 
among  the  English  is  the  most  excellent  in  both  kinds  for 
the  stage. 

''For  comedy,  witness  his  Gentlemen  of  Yerona,  his 
Errors,  his  Love's  Labor's  Lost,  his  Love's  Labor's  Won, 
his  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  and  his  Merchant  of  Venice. 
For  tragedy,  his  Richard  the  2,  Richard  the  3,  Henry  the 
4,  King  John,  Titus  Andronicus,  and  his  Romeo  and 
Juliet." 

All  these  plays  had,  therefore,  been  written  before 
1598,  for  this  book  of  Meres  was  published  in  the  summer 
of  that  year.  We  know  from  Henslowe's  Diary  that  Titus 
Andronicus  was  acted  on  the  stage  as  early  as  January 
28,  1594;  and  Love's  Labor's  Lost,  called  "  Beronne "  and 
"Burbon"  by  the  ignorant  Henslowe,  from  Biron,  one  of 
the  principal  characters,  was  put  upon  the  stage  on  Novem- 
ber 2,  1597. 

I  feel  that  every  reader  will  coincide  with  me  in  the 
belief,  virtually  amounting  to  a  certainty,  that  the  poem 
of  Venus  and  Adonis  was  written  entirely  by  one  person, 
and  that  that  person  was  the  author,  in  part  at  least,  of 
the  plays  attributed  to  Shaksper,  quotations  from  which 
are  set  out  in  this  chapter. 

The  following  are  peculiar  and  noteworthy  words: 
"Aidance,  clepes,  cleped,  clepeth,  disjoined,  enchanting, 
eyne,  manage  (as  a  noun),  needs't,  petitioners,  proceedings, 
quoth  (used  seventeen  times),  repine  (as  a  noun),  and 
whereat  (used  seven  times)." 


VENUS   AND   ADONIS    PHRASES  REPEATED  IN  PLAYS,   283 

I  am  well  aware  that  the  collocation  of  phrases  in  this 
chapter  will  not  interest  the  general  reader,  but  it  may 
be  of  some  little  value  to  the  student  of  English  literature 
who  is  seeking  for  the  true  Shakespeare.  I  am  only  striv- 
ing to  give  facts  in  aid  of  the  search  for  the  truth,  coupled 
with  my  ovm  opinion  based  upon  those  facts,  and  I  leave 
the  reader  free  to  use  the  facts  either  for  the  purpose  of 
forming  his  own  opinion  or  of  gathering  more  facts  to 
enable  him  ultimately  to  reach  a  right  conclusion.  In 
trying  to  reach  a  conclusion  he  might  be  disturbed  by  the 
thought  that  perhaps  the  ^Titers  of  that  era  may  have 
borrowed  from  the  Venus  and  Adonis  phrases.  Such  may 
have  been  the  case  as  to  some  of  them,  but  the  many 
striking  resemblances  in  plirase  and  words  between  the 
Venus  and  Adonis  and  the  plays  lead  the  disinterested 
student  to  the  conviction  that  such  similarity  was  not  the 
work  of  mere  imitators. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

FRANCIS  BACON  CONSIDERED. 

"Such  a  one  is  a  natural  philosopher.^' 

As  You  Like  It,  iii,  2. 

The  question  as  to  the  authorship  of  the  Venus  and 
Adonis  is  narrowed  down  in  my  opinion  to  three  men, 
Francis  Bacon,  Thomas  Dekker,  and  Michael  Drayton. 
Were  these  men  worthy  of  such  authorship? 

Before  further  examination  and  decision  on  the  merits, 
I  will  briefly  consider  and  state  the  poetical  history  of 
each,  in  the  order  above  stated. 

Francis  Bacon  was  born  on  the  22d  day  of  January, 
1561,  and  died  on  the  9th  day  of  April,  1626.  In  a  letter 
to  Sir  John  Davies,  he  speaks  of  himself  as  a  concealed 
poet.  Spedding,  his  best  biographer,  says  that  Bacon  had 
all  the  natural  faculties  which  a  poet  wants — a  fine  ear 
for  metre,  a  fine  feeling  for  imaginative  effect  in  words, 
and  a  vein  of  poetic  passion. 

Taine,  in  his  ''History  of  English  Literature,"  thus  de- 
scribes him:  "In  this  band  of  scholars,  dreamers,  and 
inquirers,  appears  the  most  comprehensive,  sensible,  origi- 
native of  the  minds  of  the  age,  Francis  Bacon,  a  great  and 
luminous  intellect,  one  of  the  finest  of  this  poetic  progeny, 
who,  like  his  predecessors,  was  naturally  disposed  to  clothe 
his  ideas  in  the  most  splendid  dress;  in  this  age,  a  thought 
did  not  seem  complete  until  it  had  assumed  form  and  color. 
But  what  distinguishes  him  from  all  others  is,  that  with 
him  an  image  only  serves  to  concentrate  meditation.  He 
reflected  long,  stamped  on  his  mind  all  the  parts  and  rela- 


FRANCIS  BACON  CONSIDERED.  285 

tions  of  his  subject;  he  is  master  of  it,  and  then,  instead 
of  exposing  this  complete  idea  in  a  graduated  chain  of 
reasoning,  he  embodies  it  in  a  comparison  so  expressive, 
exact,  hicid,  that  behind  the  figure  we  perceive  all  the 
details  of  the  idea,  like  liquor  in  a  fine  crystal  vase." 
Again  he  says,  ''He  is  a  producer  of  conceptions  and  of 
sentences.  The  matter  being  explored,  he  says  to  us, 
'  Such  it  is ;  touch  it  not  on  that  side ;  it  must  be  approached 
from  the  other.'  Nothing  more;  no  proof,  no  effort  to 
convince;  he  affirms  and  does  nothing  more;  he  has 
thought  in  the  manner  of  artists  and  poets,  and  he  speaks 
after  the  manner  of  prophets  and  seers." 

On  the  28th  of  February,  1587-8,  a  tragedy  called 
''The  Misfortunes  of  Arthur"  and  certain  dumb-shows  in 
which  Bacon  assisted  were  presented  before  the  Queen  at 
Greenwich.  The  dumb-shows  and  additional  speeches 
were  prepared  by  Bacon  and  others. 

In  the  year  1595,  Bacon  composed  a  device  called  "  The 
Conference  of  Pleasure"  for  his  friend  Essex,  which  was 
presented  before  Queen  Elizabeth  on  November  17,  1595, 
the  anniversary  of  the  accession  of  the  Queen.  This  device 
is  printed  in  the  letters  and  memorials  of  state  of  the 
Sidney  family,  and  consisted  in  part  of  a  dumb-show. 
Four  characters  are  introduced,  an  old  Hermit,  a  Secretary 
of  State,  a  brave  Soldier,  and  an  Esquire.  The  Esquire 
presents  them  each  in  turn  to  her  Majesty.  The  Hermit 
recommends  the  gift  of  the  Muses.  I  will  give  an  extract 
from  each  to  show  Bacon's  style.  The  Hermit,  inter  alia, 
says: 

"Whether  he  believe  me  or  no,  there  is  no  prison  to 
the  thoughts,  which  are  free  under  the  greatest  tyrants. 
Shall  any  man  make  his  conceit  as  an  anchorite,  mured 


286  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

up  with  the  compass  of  one  beauty  or  person,  that  may 
have  the  liberty  of  all  contemplation?  Shall  he  exchange 
the  sweet  travelling  through  the  universal  variety  for  one 
wearisome  and  endless  round  or  labyrinth?  Let  thy 
master  offer  his  services  to  the  Muses.  It  is  long  since  they 
received  any  into  their  court.  They  give  alms  continually 
at  their  gate;  but  few  they  have  ever  admitted  into  their 
palace.  There  shall  he  find  secrets  not  dangerous  to  know; 
sides  and  parties  not  factious  to  hold;  precepts  and  com- 
mandments not  penal  to  disobey.  The  gardens  of  love, 
wherein  he  now  placeth  himself,  are  fresh  to-day  and 
fading  to-morrow,  as  the  sun  comports  them  or  is  turned 
from  them.  But  the  gardens  of  the  Muses  keep  the  privi- 
leges of  the  golden  age:  they  ever  flourish  and  are  in 
league  with  time.  The  monuments  of  wit  survive  the 
monuments  of  power.  The  verses  of  a  poet  endure  without 
a  syllable  lost,  while  States  and  Empires  pass  many 
periods.  Let  him  not  think  that  he  shall  descend;  for  he 
is  now  upon  a  hill  as  a  ship  is  mounted  upon  the  ridge  of  a 
wave,  but  that  hill  of  the  Muses  is  above  tempests,  always 
clear  and  calm;  a  hill  of  the  goodliest  discovery  that  man 
can  have,  being  a  prospect  upon  all  the  errors  and  wander- 
ings of  the  present  and  former  times." 

The  Soldier,  in  his  turn,  recommends  the  profession 
of  arms. 

"Then  for  the  dignity  of  the  military  profession,"  he 
says,  "is  it  not  the  truest  and  perfectest  practice  of  all 
virtues?  of  wisdom  in  disposing  those  things,  which  are 
most  subject  to  confusion  and  accident;  of  justice  in  con- 
tinually distributing  rewards;  of  temperance  in  exercising 
of  the  straitest  discipline;  of  fortitude  in  toleration  of  all 
labors  and  abstinence  from  effeminate  delights;  of  con- 


FRANCIS  BACON  CONSIDERED,  287 

stancy,  in  bearing  and  digesting  the  greatest  variety  of 
fortune.  So  that  when  all  other  places  and  professions 
require  but  their  several  virtues,  a  brave  leader  in  the  wars 
must  be  accomplished  in  all.  It  is  the  wars  that  are  the 
tribunal  seat,  where  the  highest  rights  and  possessions  are 
decided;  the  occupation  of  kings,  the  root  of  nobility,  the 
protection  of  all  estates." 

In  advocacy  of  statesmanship,  the  Statesman,  in  part, 
says: 

"  But  what  is  thy  master's  end?  If  to  make  the  prince 
happy  he  serves,  let  the  instructions  to  employ  men,  the 
relations  of  ambassadors,  the  treaties  between  princes, 
and  actions  of  the  present  time,  be  the  books  he  reads; 
let  the  orations  of  wise  princes  or  experimented  counsellors 
in  council  or  parliament,  and  the  final  sentences  of  grave 
and  learned  judges,  in  weighty  and  doubtful  causes,  be 
the  lecturers  he  frequents.  Let  the  holding  of  affection 
of  confederates  without  charge,  the  frustrating  of  the 
attempts  of  enemies  without  battles,  the  entitling  of  the 
crown  to  new  possessions  without  show  of  wrong,  the 
filling  of  the  prince's  coffers  without  violence,  the  keeping 
of  men  in  appetite  without  impatience,  be  the  inventions 
he  seeks  out.  Let  policy  and  matters  of  state  be  the 
chief,  and  almost  the  only  thing  he  intends." 

In  summing  up,  the  Esquire  replies,  in  part,  as  follows : 

"Attend,  you  beadsman  of  the  Muses,  you  take  your 
pleasure  in  a  wilderness  of  variety;  but  it  is  but  of  shadows. 
You  are  as  a  man  rich  in  pictures,  medals,  and  crystals. 
Your  mind  is  of  the  water,  which  taketh  all  forms  and 
impressions,  but  is  weak  of  substance.  Will  you  com- 
pare shadows  with  bodies,  pictures  with  life,  variety  of 
many  beauties  with  the  peerless  excellency  of  one,  the 


288  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

element  of  water  with  the  element  of  fire?  And  such  is 
the  comparison  between  knowledge  and  love. 

"Come  out,  man  of  war,  you  must  be  ever  in  noise. 
You  will  give  law^s,  and  advance  force,  and  trouble  nations, 
and  remove  landmarks  of  kingdoms,  and  hunt  men,  and 
pen  tragedies  in  blood;  and  that  which  is  worst  of  all, 
make  all  the  virtues  accessories  to  bloodshed.  Hath  the 
practice  of  force  so  deprived  you  of  the  use  of  reason,  as 
that  you  will  compare  the  interruption  of  society  with  the 
perfection  of  society?  the  conquest  of  bodies  with  the  con- 
quest of  spirits?  the  terrestrial  fire,  w'hich  destroyeth  and 
dissolveth,  with  the  celestial  fire,  which  quickeneth  and 
giveth  life? 

"As  for  the  Muses,  they  are  tributary  to  her  Majesty 
for  the  great  liberties  they  have  enjoyed  in  her  kingdom 
during  her  most  flourishing  reign ;  in  thankfulness  whereof, 
they  have  adorned  and  accomplished  her  Majesty  with  the 
gifts  of  all  the  sisters.  What  library  can  present  such  a 
story  of  great  actions,  as  her  Majesty  carrieth  in  her  royal 
breast  by  the  often  return  of  this  happy  day?  What 
worthy  author  or  favorite  of  the  Muses  is  not  familiar 
with  her?  Or  what  language  wherein  the  Muses  have 
used  to  speak  is  unknown  to  her?" 

In  1594  he  took  a  chief  part  in  the  preparation  of  the 
Christmas  revels  at  Gray's  Inn  for  the  purpose  of  enter- 
taining the  Queen  and  her  courtiers  and  assisting  in 
recovering  the  lost  honor  of  Gray's  Inn,  which  had  suffered 
from  the  miscarriage  of  a  Christmas  revel.  It  appears 
from  a  letter  found  among  Lord  Burghley's  papers  that 
Bacon  wrote,  in  substance,  that  he  was  sorry  that  the  joint 
masque  from  the  Four  Inns  of  Court  had  failed;  but  that 
a  dozen  gentlemen  of  Gray's  Inn  were  ready  to  furnish  a 


FRANCIS  BACON  CONSIDERED.  289 

masque.  An  account  of  these  revels,  entitled  "Gesta 
Grayorum"  was  printed  in  1688. 

Again  he  produced  another  device  for  Essex  to  be 
presented  before  the  Queen.  This  was  called  "  The  Masque 
of  the  Indian  Prince,  or  the  Darling  Piece  of  Love  and 
Self-love."  In  this  piece  two  wanderers  are  introduced. 
One  of  them  is  a  young  Indian  Prince,  who  was  born  blind, 
and  the  other  wanderer  is  his  conductor  or  guide.  The 
third  speaker  is  the  Squire,  who  appears  also  in  the  Essex 
masque. 

There  is  nothing  very  different  either  in  style  or  story 
in  this  last  from  the  Essex  masque,  and  the  same  Latin 
quotation  is  used  in  both,  "  Amare  et  sapere." 

The  following  extract  will  remind  the  reader  of  the  lauda- 
tions of  the  Virgin  Queen  in  the  Midsummer  Night's  Dream: 
"And  at  last,  this  present  year,  out  of  one  of  the  holiest 
vaults,  was  delivered  to  him  an  oracle  in  these  words: 

"  Seated  between  the  old  world  and  the  new, 
A  land  there  is  no  other  land  may  touch, 
Where  reigns  a  Queen  in  peace  and  honor  true ; 
Stories  or  fables  do  describe  no  such. 
Never  did  Atlas  such  a  burden  bear. 
As  she  in  holding  up  the  world  oppress't, 
Supplying  with  her  virtue  everywhere 
Weakness  of  friends,  errors  of  servants  best. 
No  nation  breeds  a  warmer  blood  for  war, 
And  yet  she  calms  them  by  her  majesty; 
No  age  hath  ever  wits  refined  so  far, 
And  yet  she  calms  them  by  her  policy; 
To  her  thy  son  must  make  his  sacrifice. 
If  he  will  have  the  morning  of  his  eyes. 

"This  oracle  hath  been  our  direction  hitherto  and  the 
cause    of    our    wearisome    pilgrimage.     We    do    humbly 


290  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

beseech  your  Majesty  that  we  make  experience  whether 
we  be  at  the  end  of  our  journey  or  not." 

Bacon  assisted  in  furnishing  a  Masque  which  was 
designed  to  celebrate  the  marriage  of  the  Princess  Ehza- 
beth  to  the  Count  Palatine;  and  Chamberlain,  writing  on 
the  18th  of  February,  1612-3,  in  noticing  the  masque, 
speaks  of  Bacon  as  its  chief  contriver. 

Of  his  translation  of  certain  of  the  Psalms  into  English 
verse,  I  will  give  a  few  extracts  to  show  his  style.  The 
first  is  from  the  ninetieth  Psalm: 

"  0,  thou  who  art  our  hope,  to  whom  we  fly. 
And  so  hast  always  been  from  age  to  age. 
Before  the  hills  did  intercept  the  sky, 
Or  that  the  frame  was  up  of  earthly  stage. 
One  God  thou  wert  and  art  and  still  shall  be : 
The  line  of  life,  it  doth  not  measure  thee. 

Both  death  and  life  obey  thy  holy  love. 
And  visit  in  their  turns,  as  they  are  sent. 
A  thousand  years  with  thee,  they  are  no  more 
Than  yesterday,  which  ere  it  is,  is  spent. 

Or  as  a  watch  by  night,  that  course  doth  keep, 
And  goes  and  comes  un wares  to  them  that  sleep. 

Thou  carry'st  man  away  as  with  a  tide ; 

Then  down  swim  all  his  thoughts  that  mounted  high; 

Much  like  a  mocking  dream  that  will  not  bide, 

But  flies  before  the  sight  of  waking  eye. 
Or  as  the  grass  that  cannot  term  obtain 
To  see  the  summer  come  about  again. 

Teach  us,  0  Lord,  to  number  well  our  days. 

Thereby  our  hearts  to  wisdom  to  apply; 

For  that  which  guides  man  best  in  all  his  ways 

Is  meditation  of  mortality. 

This  bubble  life,  this  vapor  of  our  breath. 
Teach  us  to  consecrate  to  hour  of  death." 


FRANCIS  BACON  CONSIDERED.  291 

The  second  is  a  short  extract  from  the  translation  of 
the  104th  Psahn: 

"The  clouds  as  chariots  swift  do  scour  the  sky; 
The  stormy  winds  upon  their  wings  do  fly ; 
His  angels  spirits  are  that  wait  his  will 
As  flames  of  fire,  his  anger  they  fulfill. 
The  higher  grounds  where  waters  cannot  rise, 
By  rain  and  dews  are  watered  from  the  skies, 
Causing  the  earth  put  forth  the  grass  for  beasts 
And  garden  herbs  served  at  the  greatest  feasts. 
And  bread  that  is  all  viands  firmament 
And  gives  a  firm  and  solid  nourishment, 
And  wine,  man's  spirit  for  to  recreate, 
And  oil,  his  face  for  to  exhilarate." 

In  the  latter  part  of  his  life,  Bacon  wrote  a  short  poem, 
which  I  insert  in  its  entirety : 

"  The  world's  a  bubble,  and  the  life  of  man 

Less  than  a  span; 
In  his  conception  wretched,  from  the  womb 

So  to  the  tomb; 
Cm'sed  from  his  cradle  and  brought  up  to  years 

With  cares  and  fears : 
A^Tio,  then,  to  frail  mortality  shall  trust, 
But  limns  the  water,  or  but  writes  in  dust. 

Yet,  whilst  with  sorrow  here  we  live  opprest. 

What  life  is  best? 
Courts  are  but  onh^  superficial  schools, 

To  dandle  fools; 
The  rural  parts  are  turned  into  a  den 

Of  savage  men; 
And  where's  the  city  from  foul  vice  so  free 
But  may  be  termed  the  worst  of  all  the  three? 


292  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Domestic  cares  afflict  the  husband's  bed, 

Or  pains  his  head. 
Those  that  hve  single  take  it  for  a  curse, 

Or  do  things  worse. 
Some  would  have  children;  those  that  have  them  moan 

Or  wish  them  gone. 
What  is  it,  then,  to  have  or  have  no  wife, 
But  single  thraldom  or  a  double  strife? 

Our  own  affections  still  at  home  to  please 

Is  a  disease: 
To  cross  the  seas  to  any  foreign  soil, 

Perils  and  toil. 
Wars  with  the  r  noise  affright  us ;  when  they  cease. 

We're  worse  in  peace. 
What  then  remains,  but  that  we  still  should  cry 
Not  to  be  born,  or,  being  born,  to  die?" 

I  cite  a  few  more  short  examples  of  his  style  in  prose. 
In  the  description  of  Solomon's  House  in  the  fragmentary 
New  Atlantis,  written  nearly  three  centuries  ago,  Bacon, 
prophet-like,  describes  improvements  and  conveniences, 
such  as  we  now  have.  Thus,  for  instance,  he  causes  the 
father  of  Solomon's  House  to  say : 

''We  have  also  engine  houses,  where  are  prepared 
engines  and  instruments  of  all  sorts  of  motions.  There  we 
imitate  and  practice  to  make  swifter  motions  than  any 
you  have,  either  out  of  your  muskets,  or  any  engine  that 
you  have;  and  to  make  them,  and  multiply  them  more 
easily,  and  with  small  force,  by  wheels  and  other  means: 
and  to  make  them  stronger,  and  more  violent  than  yours 
are;  exceeding  your  greatest  cannons  and  basilisks.  We 
represent  also  ordnance  and  instruments  of  war,  and 
engines  of  all  kinds:  and  likewise  new  mixtures  and  com- 
positions of  gunpowder,  wild-fires  burning  in  water  and 


FRANCIS  BACON  CONSIDERED.  293 

unquenchable.  Also  fire-works  of  all  variety  both  for 
pleasure  and  for  use.  We  imitate  also  flights  of  birds; 
we  have  some  degrees  of  flying  in  the  air;  we  have  ships 
and  boats  for  going  under  the  water,  and  brooking  of 
seas;  also  swimming-girdles  and  supporters.  We  have 
divers  curious  clocks,  and  other  like  motions  of  return, 
and  some  perpetual  motions.  We  imitate  also  motions 
of  living  creatures,  by  images  of  men,  beasts,  birds,  fishes 
and  serpents;  we  have  also  a  great  number  of  other 
various  motions,  strange  for  equality,  fineness  and  sub- 
tilty." 

Then  follows  Bacon's  tribute  to  inventors.  He  seemed 
to  have  realized  the  fact,  so  well  known  to  the  mass  of  the 
people,  especially  in  the  United  States,  that  the  inventor, 
as  a  general  rule,  is  not  the  pecuniary  gainer  by  his  inven- 
tion, no  matter  how  useful  the  device  may  be,  and  there- 
fore in  the  following  lines  he  proposes  statues  and  liberal 
rewards  for  inventors: 

"  For  our  ordinances  and  rites :  we  have  two  very  long 
and  fair  galleries:  in  one  of  these  we  place  patterns  and 
samples  of  all  manner  of  the  more  rare  and  excellent 
inventions :  in  the  other  we  place  the  statues  of  all  principal 
inventors.  There  we  have  the  statue  of  your  Columbus, 
that  discovered  the  West  Indies:  also  the  inventor  of 
ships:  your  monk  that  was  the  inventor  of  ordnance,  and 
of  gunpowder:  the  inventor  of  music:  the  inventor  of 
letters:  the  inventor  of  printing:  the  inventor  of  obser- 
vations of  astronomy :  the  inventor  of  works  in  metal :  the 
inventor  of  glass:  the  inventor  of  silk  of  the  worm:  the 
inventor  of  wine:  the  inventor  of  corn  and  bread:  the 
inventor  of  sugars :  and  all  these  by  more  certain  tradition 
than  you  have.     Then  have  we  divers  inventors  of  our  own 


294  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

of  excellent  works;  which  since  you  have  not  seen,  it  were 
too  long  to  make  descriptions  of  them;  and  besides,  in  the 
right  understanding  of  those  descriptions,  you  might  easily 
err.  For  upon  every  invention  of  value  we  erect  a  statue 
to  the  inventor,  and  give  him  a  liberal  and  honourable  re- 
ward. These  statues  are,  some  of  brass :  some  of  marble  and 
touch-stone;  some  of  cedar,  and  other  special  woods  gilt 
and  adorned:  some  of  iron;  some  of  silver;  some  of  gold." 

But  there  is  one  statement  of  Bacon  in  his  address  on 
the  Unity  of  the  Church,  which  ought  to  be  read  and 
studied  by  every  reader  very  carefully.  Bacon  plants 
himself  in  his  enumeration  of  the  considerations  for  the 
edification  and  pacification  of  the  Church  upon  the  author- 
ity of  St.  Paul,  who,  in  his  epistle  to  the  Ephesians,  declared 
himself  to  be  "an  apostle  of  Jesus  Christ  by  the  will  of 
God,  to  the  saints  which  are  at  Ephesus,  and  to  the  faithful 
in  Christ  Jesus." 

This  Apostle  declared  that  unity  was  to  be  kept  by 
having  one  Lord,  one  faith  and  one  baptism,  and  Bacon's 
strong  and  really  unanswerable  proposition  on  church 
unity  is  that  the  particular  form  of  Church  Government, 
by  reason  of  its  omission  from  the  Apostle's  definition,  is 
therefore  neither  essential  nor  possible.  Thus,  he  says, 
"  there  should  be  but  one  form  of  discipline  in  all  churches, 
and  that  imposed  by  necessity  of  a  commandment  and 
prescript  out  of  the  word  of  God;  it  is  a  matter  volumes 
have  been  compiled  of,  and  therefore  can  not  receive  a 
brief  redarguation.  I  for  my  part  do  confess,  that  in 
revolving  the  Scriptures  I  could  never  find  any  such  thing : 
but  that  God  had  left  the  like  liberty  to  the  church  gov- 
ernment, as  he_^had  done  to  the  civil  government;  to  be 
varied  according  to  time,  and  place,  and  accidents,  which 


FRANCIS   BACON   CONSIDERED.  295 

nevertheless  his  high  and  divine  providence  doth  order 
and  dispose.  For  all  civil  governments  are  restrained 
from  God  mider  the  general  grounds  of  justice  and  manners; 
but  the  policies  and  forms  of  them  are  left  free;  so  that 
monarchies  and  kingdoms,  senates  and  seignories,  popular 
states  and  commonalties,  are  lawful,  and  where  they  are 
planted  ought  to  be  maintained  inviolate. 

"So  likewise  in  church  matters,  the  substance  of  "doc- 
trine is  immutable,  and  so  are  the  general  rules  of  govern- 
ment :  but  for  rites  and  ceremonies,  and  for  the  particular 
hierarchies,  policies,  and  disciples  of  churches,  they  be  left 
at  large.  And  therefore  it  is  good  we  return  unto  the 
ancient  bounds  of  unity  in  the  church  of  God;  which  was, 
one  faith,  one  baptism;  and  not,  one  hierarchy,  one  dis- 
cipline ;  and  that  we  observe  the  league  of  Christians,  as  it 
is  penned  by  our  Saviour ;  which  is  in  substance  of  doctrine 
this:  He  that  is  not  with  us,  is  against  us;  but  in  things 
indifferent,  and  but  of  circumstance,  this:  He  that  is  not 
against  us,  is  with  us.  In  these  things,  so  as  the  general 
rules  be  observed:  that  Christ's  flock  be  fed;  that  there 
be  a  succession  in  bishops  and  ministers,  which  are  the 
prophets  of  the  New  Testament;  that  there  be  a  due  and 
reverent  use  of  the  power  of  the  keys;  that  those  that 
preach  the  gospel,  live  of  the  gospel;  that  all  things  tend 
to  edification;  that  all  things  be  done  in  order  and  with 
decency,  and  the  like:  the  rest  is  left  to  the  holy  wisdom 
and  spiritual  discretion  of  the  master  builders  and  inferior 
builders  in  Christ's  church;  as  it  is  excellently  alluded  by 
that  father  that  noted,  that  Christ's  garment  was  without 
seam;  and  yet  the  church's  garment  was  of  divers  colours: 
and  thereupon  setteth  down  for  a  rule,  in  veste  varietas 
sit,  scissura  non  sit." 


296  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

There  are  three  very  good  descriptions  of  Bacon's 
powers  and  abiUty,  which  are  taken  from  contemporary 
writers. 

Ben  Jonson  thus  eulogizes  him: 

"Yet  there  happened  in  my  time  one  noble  speaker, 
who  was  full  of  gravity  in  his  speaking.  His  language, 
where  he  could  spare,  or  pass  by  a  jest,  was  nobly  censo- 
rious. No  man  ever  spoke  more  neatly,  more  precisely, 
more  weightily,  or  suffered  less  emptiness,  less  idleness, 
in  what  he  uttered.  No  member  of  his  speech  but  con- 
sisted of  his  owTi  graces.  His  hearers  could  not  cough  or 
look  aside  from  him  without  loss.  He  commanded  when 
he  spoke,  and  had  his  judges  angry  and  pleased  at  his 
discretion.  No  man  had  their  affections  more  in  his  power. 
The  fear  of  every  man  who  heard  him  was,  lest  he  should 
make  an  end. 

"Cicero  is  said  to  be  the  only  wit  that  the  people  of 
Rome  had  equalled  to  their  empire.  Ingenium  par  imperio. 
We  have  had  many,  and  in  their  several  ages  (to  take  in 
but  the  former  seculum)  Sir  Thomas  More,  the  elder  Wiat, 
Henry  earl  of  Surrey,  Chaloner,  Smith,  Eliot,  B,  Gardiner, 
were  for  their  tunes  admirable;  and  the  more  because 
they  began  eloquence  with  us.  Sir  Nic.  Bacon  was  singu- 
lar, and  almost  alone,  in  the  beginning  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth's time.  Sir  Philip  Sidney  and  Mr.  Hooker  (in  differ- 
ent matter)  grew  great  masters  of  wit  and  language,  and 
in  whom  all  \dgour  of  invention  and  strength  of  judgment 
met.  The  earl  of  Essex,  noble  and  high,  and  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  not  to  be  contemned,  either  for  judgment  or 
style.  Sir  Henry  Saville,  grave  and  truly  lettered;  Sir 
Edwin  Sandys,  excellent  in  both;  Lord  Egerton,  a  grave 
and  great  orator,  and  best  when  he  was  provoked.     But 


FRANCIS   BACON    CONSIDERED.  297 

his  learned  and  able  {hut  unfortunate)  successor  is  he,  that 
hath  filled  up  all  numbers,  and  performed  that  in  our  tongue, 
which  may  be  compared  and  preferred  either  to  insolent 
Greece  or  haughty  Rome.  In  short,  within  his  view,  and 
about  his  times,  were  all  the  wits  born,  that  could  honor  a 
language,  or  help  study.  Now  things  daily  fall:  wits 
grow  downward,  and  eloquence  grows  backward:  so  that 
he  may  be  named,  and  stand  as  the  mark  and  acme  of  our 
language." 

Sir  Tobie  Matthew  calls  him  a  literary  monster.  In 
his  Address  to  the  Reader,  appended  to  his  collection  of 
letters,  he  says: 

"  We  have  also  rare  compositions  of  minds  amongst  us, 
which  look  so  many  fair  ways  at  once  that  I  doubt  it  will 
go  near  to  pose  any  other  nation  of  Europe  to  muster  out 
in  any  age  four  men  who,  in  so  many  respects,  should 
excel  four  such  as  we  are  able  to  show — Cardinal  Wolsey, 
Sir  Thomas  More,  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  and  Sir  Francis 
Bacon;  for  they  were  all  a  kind  of  monsters  in  their 
several  ways. 

"The  fourth  was  a  creature  of  incomparable  abilities 
of  mind,  of  a  sharp  and  catching  apprehension,  large  and 
faithful  memory,  plentiful  and  sprouting  invention,  deep 
and  solid  judgment  for  as  much  as  might  concern  the 
understanding  part: — a  man  so  rare  in  knowledge,  of  so 
many  several  kinds,  indued  with  the  facility  and  felicity 
of  expressing  it  all,  in  so  elegant,  significant,  so  abmidant 
and  yet  so  choice  and  ravishing  a  way  of  words,  of  meta- 
phors, and  allusions,  as  perhaps  the  world  has  not  seen 
since  it  was  a  world. 

"  I  know  this  may  seem  a  great  hyperbole  and  strange 
kind  of  riotous  excess  of  speech;  but  the  best  means  of 


298  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

putting  me  to  shame  will  be  for  you  to  place  any  man  of 
yours  by  this  of  mine.  And,  in  the  meantime,  even  this 
little  makes  a  shift  to  show  that  the  Genius  of  England 
is  still  not  only  eminent,  but  predominant,  for  the  assem- 
bling great  variety  of  those  rare  parts,  in  some  single  man, 
which  used  to  be  incompatible  anywhere  else." 

Osborne,  a  contemporary,  has  this  to  say  of  his  ability: 
"And  my  memory  neither  doth  (nor  I  believe  possibly 
ever  can)  direct  me  to  an  example  more  splendid  in  this 
kind  than  the  Lord  Bacon,  Earl  of  St.  Albans,  who  in  all 
companies  did  appear  a  good  proficient,  if  not  a  master, 
in  those  arts  entertained  for  the  subject  of  every  one's 
discourse.  So  as  I  dare  maintain,  without  the  least  affec- 
tation of  flattery  or  hyperbole,  that  his  most  casual  talk 
deserveth  to  be  written,  as  I  have  been  told  his  first  or 
foulest  copies  required  no  great  labour  to  render  them 
competent  for  the  nicest  judgments :  high  perfection  attain- 
able only  by  use  and  treating  with  every  man  in  his 
respective  profession,  and  which  he  was  most  versed  in. 
''So  as  I  have  heard  him  entertain  a  country  lord  in 
the  proper  terms  relating  to  hawks  and  dogs,  and  at  another 
time  outcant  a  London  chirurgeon.  Thus  he  did  not  only 
learn  himself,  but  gratify  such  as  taught  him,  who  looked 
upon  their  calling  as  honoured  by  his  notice.  Nor  did  an 
easy  falling  into  arguments  (not  unjustly  taken  for  a 
blemish  in  the  most)  appear  less  than  an  ornament  in  him ; 
the  ears  of  his  hearers  receiving  more  gratification  than 
trouble ;  and  no  less  sorry  when  he  came  to  conclude,  than 
displeased  with  any  that  did  interrupt  him.  Now,  the 
general  knowledge  he  had  in  all  things,  husbanded  by  his 
wit  and  dignified  with  so  majestical  a  carriage  he  was 
known  to  own,  struck  such  an  awful  reverence  in  those  he 


FRANCIS  BACON  CONSIDERED.  299 

questioned,  that  they  durst  not  conceal  the  most  intrinsic 
part  of  their  mysteries  from  him,  for  fear  of  appearing 
ignorant  or  saucy.  All  which  rendered  him  no  less  neces- 
sary than  admirable  at  the  council-table,  when  in  refer- 
ence to  impositions,  monopolies,  etc.,  the  meanest  manu- 
facturers were  an  usual  argument;  and,  as  I  have  heard, 
he  did  in  this  baffle  the  Earl  of  Middlesex,  who  was  born 
and  bred  a  citizen,  etc.  Yet,  without  any  great  (if  at  all) 
interrupting  his  abler  studies,  as  is  not  hard  to  be  imagined 
of  a  quick  apprehension,  in  which  he  was  admirable." 

In  considering  Francis  Bacon,  the  reader  and  I  are  not 
concerned  about  his  character  or  conduct  or  the  incidents 
of  his  life,  except  as  they  bear  upon  the  present  investiga- 
tion. It  is  not  necessary  for  us  to  draw  his  frailties  from 
their  dread  abode.  Whether  he  w^as  false  to  Essex  or 
subservient  to  Buckingham,  or  guilty  of  accepting  bribes 
without  any  palliating  circumstances,  concerns  us  not  in 
this  investigation.  Was  he  a  poet  and  a  good  one  and 
was  he,  as  he  himself  declares,  a  concealed  poet?  Was  he 
an  adept  in  philosophy?  Was  he  a  ready  wTiter?  Did 
he  have  all  knowledge  for  his  province?  Had  he  the  time, 
the  inclination  and  the  ability  to  compose  or  revise, 
amplify  and  embellish  such  plays  as  Hamlet,  Othello,  and 
Measure  for  Measure?  One  thing  we  do  know  about  him 
that  bears  directly  upon  the  subject-matter  of  our  inquiry, 
and  that  is  that  he  declared  and  implicitly  believed  that 
"  the  gardens  of  the  Muses  keep  the  privileges  of  the 
golden  age;  they  ever  flourish  and  are  in  league  with  time. 
The  monuments  of  wit  survive  the  monuments  of  power. 
The  verses  of  a  poet  endure  without  a  syllable  lost,  while 
States  and  Empires  pass  many  periods." 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 

THOMAS  DEKKER  CONSIDERED. 

"Much  is  the  force  of  heaven-hred  poesy." 

—Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  iii,  2. 

Very  little  is  known  of  Thomas  Dekker  by  the  reading 
public,  and  yet  he  was  one  of  the  best  poets  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan period.  If  what  I  have  written  or  shall  write  about 
him  will  be  the  means  of  inducing  students  of  English 
literature  to  closely  investigate  the  facts  as  to  his  life, 
especially  in  connection  with  the  contemporary  poets  and 
dramatists,  much  of  the  fog  which  has  hitherto  enveloped 
the  question  of  Shakespearean  authorship  would  be  dis- 
pelled. No  careful  search  has  ever  been  made  to  obtain 
the  facts  as  to  Dekker's  birth,  parentage,  family  history 
and  surroundings,  or  the  time  and  place  of  his  death. 

His  birthplace  doubtless  was  London,  because,  in  a 
book  written  by  him,  called  ''The  Seven  Deadly  Sins  of 
London,"  and  printed  in  1606,  speaking  of  the  city  of 
London,  he  says,  ''0,  thou  beautifullest  daughter  of  the 
two  united  Monarchies!  from  thy  womb  received  I  my 
being;  from  thy  breast,  my  nourishment." 

The  term  of  his  life  probably  extended  over  seventy 
years,  because  in  the  dedication  of  another  book  of  his, 
entitled  "English  Villainies,  seven  several  times  pressed 
to  death,"  and  dated  in  February,  1637,  he  says,  "  I  preach 
without  a  pulpit:  This  is  no  sermon,  but  an  epistle  dedica- 
tory which  dedicates  these  discoveries,  and  my  three- 
score years  devotedly  yours  in  my  best  service." 

In  another  book  called  "Wars,  wars,  wars,"  issued  in 


THOMAS  DEKKER  CONSIDERED.  301 

1628,  he  writes,  "For  my  heart  danceth  sprightly  when  I 
see  (old  as  I  am)  our  English  gallantry." 

There  is  another  allusion  to  his  age  in  the  dedication 
affixed  to  his  tragi-comedy  called  "Match  Me  in  London," 
printed  in  1631.  Therein  he  says,  "I  have  been  a  priest 
in  Apollo's  temple  many  years /my  voice  is  decaying  with 
my  age,  yet  yours  being  clear  and  above  mine  shall  much 
honor  me  if  you  but  listen  to  my  old  tunes." 

He  is  first  directly  mentioned  in  Henslowe's  Diary  on 
page  117,  under  the  name  of  "Dickers,"  on  the  eighth 
day  of  January,  1597,  as  appears  by  the  following  entry: 
"Lent  unto  thomas  Douton,  the  8  of  Janewary  1597  twenty 
shillinges  to  by  a  booke  of  Mr  Dickers  Lent  XX  s." 
What  the  name  of  the  play  was  is  not  specified.  On  the 
next  page  are  the  following  entries:  "Lent  unto  the  Com- 
pany the  15  of  Janewary  1597  to  bye  a  book  of  Mr  Dickers 
called  Fayeton  fower  pounde.  I  say,  lent."  The  next 
entry  on  the  same  page  shows  that  poor  Dekker  was  in 
trouble,  having  been  imprisoned  in  jail  for  debt.  Hen- 
slowe,  on  page  118,  records  the  following:  "Lent  unto  the 
Company  the  4  of  febreary  1598  to  disecharge  Mr  Dicker 
out  of  the  counter  of  the  poultrey  the  some  of  fortie 
shillinges. 

"I  sayed,  d  to  Thomas  Douton  xxxx  s." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  before  1597  he  had  written  for  the 
theatres,  and  his  productions  were  received  with  much 
favor. 

The  pleasant  comedy  of  old  Fortunatus  must  have  been 
written  by  Dekker  prior  to  or  in  the  early  part  of  the  year 
1595,  for  Henslowe,  in  his  Diary,  at  page  64,  makes  the 
following  entry :  "  16  of  Febreary  1595  Rd  at  Fortunatus 
xxxx  s."     It  was  a  popular  and  paying  play.     The  entries 


302  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

in  the  Diary  show  that  it  was  frequently  acted  and  at  good 
prices.  In  1600  it  was  printed,  the  title  page  says,  "As 
it  was  played  before  the  Queen's  Majesty  this  Christmas 
by  the  Right  Honorable  the  Earl  of  Nottingham,  Lord 
High  Admiral  of  England,  his  servants." 

The  Queen  must  have  been  greatly  pleased  with  the 
flattering  language  of  Dekker's  prologue.  It  is  headed, 
''The  prologue  at  Court;  enter  two  old  men,"  and  it 
begins  thus: 

''  1.  Are  you  then  traveling  to  the  temple  of  Eliza? 

"2.  Even  to  her  temple  are  my  feeble  limbs  traveling: 
Some  call  her  Pandora;  some,  Gloriana;  some,  Delphoebe; 
some,  Astrea;  all  by  several  names  to  express  several 
loves.  Yet  all  these  names  make  but  one  celestial  body, 
as  all  those  loves  meet  to  create  but  one  soul. 

"1.  I  am  one  of  her  own  Country  and  we  adore  her  by 
the  name  of  Eliza. 

"2.  Blessed  name,  happy  country;  your  Eliza  makes 
your  land  Elysium." 

Henslowe  shows,  at  page  161,  that  he  paid  to  Dekker 
on  December  12, 1599,  the  sum  of  forty  shillings  for  making 
the  "ending"  or  addition  to  Fortunatus  for  the  Court. 
This  reference  is  to  the  epilogue  at  Court  at  the  end  of  the 
play,  which  is  a  direct  and  beautiful  compliment  to  the 
Queen. 

Including  Fortunatus,  I  will  enumerate  fifty-two  plays 
composed  wholly  or  in  part  by  Dekker.  On  January  8, 
1597,  he  sold  a  play  to  Henslowe  called  Phaeton;  on 
December  20th  of  the  same  year,  he  wrote  additions  to 
Marlowe's  play  of  Faustus,  and  a  prologue  to  Tamerlane. 
This  is  evidenced  by  Henslowe's  entry  at  page  71  of  the 
Diary.     On  March   1,   1598,   he   wrote   the  Triplicity  of 


/ 


THOMAS    DEKKER    CONSIDERED.  303 

Cuckolds.  On  March  13,  1598,  he  collaborated  with 
Drayton  and  Chettle  in  the  composition  of  the  Famous 
Wars  of  Henry  First,  and  the  Prince  of  Wales.  On  March 
25,  1598,  with  Drayton,  Chettle,  and  Wilson,  he  wrote 
Earl  Goodwin  and  his  Three  Sons;  on  March  30,  1598,  in 
collaboration  with  Drayton,  Wilson,  and  Chettle,  he  wrote 
Pierce  of  Exton,  as  Henslowe  calls  it.  Collier  notes,  at 
page  121  of  the  Diary,  that  "Sir  Piers  of  Exton  killed 
Richard  the  Second,  and  this  play  was  most  likely  con- 
nected with  that  historical  incident." 

If  Shaksper  did  not  have  the  ability  to  write  the  play 
of  Richard  II,  why  may  it  not  be  the  joint  work  of 
Michael  Drayton,  Thomas  Dekker,  Henry  Chettle,  and 
Robert  Wilson,  who  were  thoroughly  competent  to  com- 
pose it? 

On  May  22,  1598,  with  Wilson  and  Drayton,  he  wrote 
the  Black  Batman  of  the  North.  On  June  10,  1598,  with 
Wilson,  Drayton,  and  Chettle,  he  wrote  the  second  part  of 
Earl  Goodwin,  and  on  June  30th  of  the  same  year  he  wrote 
Madman's  Morris  in  conjunction  with  Wilson  and  Drayton. 
On  July  17,  1598,  he  wrote  Hannibal  and  Hermes;  and  on 
July  18th,  Pierce  of  Winchester,  each  with  the  same 
collaborators.  On  August  19,  1598,  he  wrote  Chance 
Medley  with  Wilson,  Monday,  and  Chettle.  On  August 
30,  1598,  he  and  Drayton  wrote  Worse  Afraid  than  Hurt, 
and  on  September  29,  1598,  they  wrote  together  the  First 
Civil  Wars  in  France.  On  November  3,  1598,  they  wrote 
the  second  part  of  the  same  play;  and  on  the  18th  of  the 
same  month,  they  composed  the  third  part  thereof.  On 
February  15,  1599,  he  wrote,  with  John  Day  and  William 
Haughton,  the  Spanish  Moor's  Tragedy;  and  on  March  1, 
1599,  he  furnished  the  Seven  Wise  Masters,  in  collabora- 


304  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

tion  with  Chettle,  John  Day,  and  WilUam  Haughton. 
On  April  7,  1599,  Chettle  and  he  began  the  play  of  Troilus 
and  Cressida,  receiving  pay  for  it  on  the  17th  of  the  same 
month;  and  on  May  2,  1599,  he  wrote  Orestes  Furies. 
Again  collaborating  with  Chettle,  on  May  26,  1599,  he 
wrote  the  tragedy  of  Agamemnon.  On  July  15,  1599,  he 
composed  the  fine  play  of  the  Shoemakers'  Holiday,  or 
the  Gentle  Craft,  which  was  acted  before  the  Queen  on 
the  succeeding  New  Year's  Day  by  the  Earl  of  Nottingham's 
servants.  The  edition  of  1600  contains  the  prologue  as 
it  was  pronounced  before  the  Queen.  On  August  1,  1599, 
he  wrote  the  play  of  Bear  a  Brain.  With  Ben  Jonson  as 
collaborator,  on  August  10,  1599,  he  wrote  Page  of  Ply- 
mouth; and  on  August  23,  1599,  with  Henry  Chettle,  The 
Stepmother's  Tragedy.  Henslowe  notes,  at  page  156  of 
the  Diary,  that  he  paid  Dekker,  Benjamin  Jonson,  Henry 
Chettle  ''and  the  other  gentlemen"  forty  shillings  for  a 
play  called  Robert  the  Second,  King  of  Scots  tragedy. 
The  play  of  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  published  as  if  by  William 
Shakespeare,  was  the  work  of  Monday,  Drayton,  Wilson, 
Hathaway,  with  additions  by  Thomas  Dekker,  for  which 
additions  Dekker  received  fifty  shillings.  The  much- 
esteemed  play  of  Patient  Grissel  was  produced  by  him  on 
October  16,  1599,  in  collaboration  with  Henry  Chettle  and 
William  Haughton.  On  April  27,  1600,  with  John  Day 
and  Henry  Chettle,  he  wrote  the  Golden  Ass  and  Cupid 
and  Psyche;  and  on  June  14,  1600,  he  composed  Fair 
Constance  of  Rome,  in  conjunction  with  Michael  Drayton, 
Richard  Hathaway,  and  Anthony  Monday.  On  October 
15,  1600,  he  wrote  Lady  Jane,  in  collaboration  with  Thomas 
Heywood,  Wentworth  Smyth,  John  Webster,  and  Henry 
Chettle.     On  January   16,   1601,   he  wrote  the  prologue 


THOMAS  DEKKER  CONSIDERED.  305 

and  epilogue  for  Pontius  Pilate;  and  on  the  same  day  he 
was  paid  by  Henslowe  "for  the  altering  of  Tasso."  On 
April  18,  1601,  with  Henry  Chettle,  he  wrote  King  Sebas- 
tian of  Portugal.  On  May  14,  1602,  with  Anthony  Mon- 
day, he  wrote  Jeptha  for  Henslowe's  Company,  or,  as  the 
Diary  spells  it,  "  Jeffta."  On  May  29,  1602,  he  wrote  the 
Two  Harpies  jointly  with  Michael  Drayton,  Thomas 
Middleton,  John  Webster,  and  Anthony  Monday.  On 
July  19,  1602,  he  wrote  a  play  called  Medicine  for  a  Curst 
Wife;  and  about  the  same  time  he  revised  the  play  of 
Tasso,  or  "mended  it"  as  Henslowe  expresses  it.  On 
October  15,  1602,  he  wrote  the  second  part  of  Lady  Jane. 
On  November  3,  1602,  with  the  aid  of  Thomas  Middleton, 
he  wrote  the  Honest  Whore,  and  on  November  23,  1602, 
with  Henry  Chettle,  he  wrote  the  play  of  Christmas  Comes 
but  Once  a  Year.  In  1602,  to  satirize  Ben  Jonson  and 
punish  him  for  the  attack  made  upon  him  in  the  Poetaster, 
he  wrote  the  famous  play  of  Satiro-mastix,  or  the  untruss- 
ing  of  the  humorous  poet.  In  1622,  with  Philip  Mas- 
singer,  he  wrote  the  Virgin  Martyr.  In  1631,  he  wrote 
the  two  plays  called  Match  Me  in  London  and  The  Wonder 
of  a  Kingdom.  He  also  wrote  with  John  Ford,  the  Sun's 
Darling  and  the  Witch  of  Edmonton.  He  must  also  be 
credited  with  the  second  part  of  the  Honest  ^Vhore,  a 
share  in  Westward  Hoe,  The  Whore  of  Babylon,  North- 
ward Hoe,  The  Famous  History  of  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt, 
and  the  Roaring  Girl. 

The  patient  tracing  of  Dekker's  playwriting  life,  as 
delineated  in  Henslowe's  Diary  and  Pearson's  Collection, 
shows  conclusively  that  the  proprietor  of  a  theatre,  for  the 
consideration  of  a  few  paltry  pounds,  shillings,  and  pence, 
commanded  the  poetic  and  dramatic  talent  of  the  very 


306  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

best  poets  of  the  time ;  that  most  of  the  plays  were  written 
in  collaboration;  and  that  when  they  received  their  pay, 
the  writers  lost  all  claim  to  their  productions,  which  there- 
after became  the  exclusive  property  of  the  owner  of  the 
theatre,  no  matter  how  ignorant  or  illiterate  he  might  be. 
Dekker,  as  the  Diary  shows,  while  loose  and  prodigal,  was 
an  industrious,  plodding,  and  ready  writer.  His  plays 
were  favorites  at  the  Court  and  were  produced  before 
Queen  Elizabeth. 

As  in  the  case  of  Bacon,  I  give  a  few  specimens  of  his 
style.  The  first  is  from  Satiro-mastix  and  is  in  praise  of 
hair  and  a  blow  at  bald  pates,  put  into  the  mouth  of  Ben 
Jonson,  alias  Horace : 

IN    PRAISE   OF   HAIR. 

''  If  of  all  the  body's  parts,  the  head 
Be  the  most  royal:  if  discourse,  wit,  judgment, 
And  all  our  understanding  faculties. 
Sit  there  in  their  high  Court  of  Parliament, 
Enacting  laws  to  sway  this  humorous  world; 
This  little  isle  of  man;  needs  must  that  crown, 
Which  stands  upon  the  supreme  head,  be  fair 
And  held  invaluable;  and  that  crown's  the  hair. 
The  head  that  wants  this  honor  stands  awry. 
Is  bare  in  name  and  in  authority. 
Hair,  'tis  the  robe  which  curious  nature  weaves 
To  hang  upon  the  head,  and  does  adorn 
Our  bodies  in  the  first  hour  we  are  born. 
God  does  bestow  that  garment :  when  we  die. 
That,  like  a  soft  and  silken  canopy, 
Is  still  spread  over  us.     In  spite  of  death. 
Our  hair  grows  in  our  grave,  and  that  alone 
Looks  fresh,  when  all  our  beauty's  gone. 
The  excellence  of  hair  in  this  shines  clear 
That  the  four  elements  take  pride  to  wear 


THOMAS  DEKKER  CONSIDERED.  307 

The  fashion  of  it.     AVlien  fire  most  bright  does  burn, 
The  flames  to  golden  locks  do  strive  to  turn; 
^Vllen  her  lascivious  arms,  the  water  hurls 
About  the  shore's  waist,  her  sleek  head  she  curls, 
And  rorid  clouds,  being  sucked  into  the  air, 
When  down  they  melt,  hang  like  fine  silver  hair. 
You  see  the  Earth,  whose  head  so  oft  is  shorn. 
Frighted  to  feel  her  locks  so  rudely  torn. 
Stands  with  her  hair  on  end,  and  thus  afraid, 
Turns  every  hair  to  a  green  naked  blade. 
Besides,  when  struck  with  grief,  we  long  to  die. 
We  spoil  that  most,  which  most  does  beautify, 
We  rend  this  head-tire  off.     I  thus  conclude 
Colors  set  colors  out.     Our  eyes  judge  right 
Of  vice  or  virtue  by  their  opposites. 
So,  if  fair  hair  to  beauty  adcl  such  grace, 
Baldness  must  needs  be  ugly,  vile  and  base." 

Then  comes  the  rejoinder  of  Dekker,  alias  Crispinus, 
giving  baldness  a  higher  place  than  hair. 

IN    PRAISE    OF    BALDNESS. 

''The  goodliest  and  most  glorious  strange-built  wonder, 
Which  that  great  Architect  hath  made  is  heaven ; 
For  there  he  keeps  his  Court.     It  is  his  kingdom. 
That's  his  best  masterpiece — j^es,  'tis  the  roof 
And  ceiling  of  the  world,  that  may  be  called 
The  head  or  crown  of  earth, — and  yet  that's  bald. 
All  creatures  in  it  bald.     The  lovely  sun 
Has  a  face  sleek  as  gold;  the  full-cheeked  moon 
As  bright  and  smooth  as  silver ;  nothing  there 
Wears  dangling  locks ;  but  sometime  blazing  stars, 
Wliose  flaming  curls  set  realms  on  fire  with  wars. 
Descend  more  low;  look  through  man's  fivefold  sense, 
Of  all,  the  eye  bears  greatest  eminence ; 
And  yet  that's  bald — The  hairs,  that  like  a  lace, 
Are  stitched  to  the  lids,  borrow  those  forms 


308  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Like  pent  houses  to  save  the  eyes  from  storms. 
A  head  and  face  o'er  grown  with  shaggy  dross, 
0!  'tis  an  orient  pearl  hid  all  in  moss; 
But  when  the  head's  all  naked  and  uncrowned, 
It  is  the  world's  globe,  even,  smooth  and  round. 
Baldness  is  nature's  butt,  at  which  our  life 
Shoots  her  last  arrow.     What  man  ever  led 
His  age  out  with  a  staff,  but  had  a  head 
Bare  and  uncovered?  he,  whose  years  do  rise 
To  their  full  height,  yet  not  bald,  is  not  wise. 
The  head  is  wisdom's  house,  hair  but  the  thatch. 
Hair!  it's  the  basest  stubble;  in  scorn  of  it. 
This  proverb  sprung,  'he  has  more  hair  than  wit.'" 

The  next  quotation  forms  a  part  of  the  dialogue  between 
Celestine  and  her  father  in  the  same  play: 
Celestine  says: 

"Must  I  betray  my  chastity,  so  long 
Clear  from  the  treason  of  rebelling  lust; 
0  husband !  0  my  father !  if  poor  I 
Must  not  live  chaste,  then  let  me  chastely  die. 
Father- 
Ay,  here's  a  charm  shall  keep  thee  chaste. 

Come  Come. 
Old  time  hath  left  us  but  an  hour  to  play 
Our  parts;  begin  the  scene;  who  shall  speak  first? 
Oh  I.     I  play  the  king,  and  kings  speak  first. 
We  need  no  prologue,  the  king  entering  first. 
He's  a  most  gracious  prologue.     Marry,  then, 
For  the  catastrophe  or  epilogue. 
There's  one  in  cloth  of  silver,  which  no  doubt, 
Will  please  the  hearers  well,  when  he  steps  out. 
His  mouth  is  filled  with  words.     See  where  he  stands. 
He'll  make  them  clap  their  eyes  besides  their  hands. 
But  to  my  part.     Suppose  who  enters  now 
A  King,  whose  eyes  are  set  in  silver;  one 


THOMAS  DEKKER  CONSIDERED.  309 

That  blusheth  gold,  speaks  music,  dancing  walks; 
Now  gathers  nearer,  takes  thee  by  the  hand. 
When  straight  thou  think'st,  the  very  orb  of  heaven 
Moves  round  about  thy  fingers.     Then  he  speaks, 
Thus — thus — I  know  not  how. 

Celestine — - 
Nor  I  to  answer  him. 

Father — 
No,  girl!  know'st  thou  not  how  to  answer  him, 
Wliy,  then,  the  field  is  lost,  and  he  rides  home, 
Like  a  great  conqueror.     Not  answer  him? 
Out  of  thy  part  already?  foiled  the  scene? 
Disranked  the  lines?  disarmed  the  action?" 

The  father  then  proposes  poison  to  her,  and  the  husband 
addresses  the  father  thus: 

"Oh, 
That  very  name  of  poison  poisons  me ; 
Thou  winter  of  a  man,  thou  walking  grave, 
Whose  life  is  like  a  dying  taper, 
How  canst  thou  define  a  lover's  laboring  thoughts? 
Wliat  scent  hast  thou  but  death?    AVhat  taste  but 

earth? 
The  breath  that  purls  from  thee  is  like  the  steam 
Of  a  new-opened  vault.     I  know  thy  drift. 
Because  thou  art  traveling  to  the  land  of  graves, 
Thou  courtest  company  and  hither  bring'st 
A  health  of  poison  to  pledge  death — a  poison 
For  this  sweet  spring;  this  element  is  mine. 
This  is  the  air  I  breathe.     Corrupt  it  not; 
This  heaven  is  mine,  I  bought  it  with  my  soul 
Of  him  that  sells  a  heaven,  to  buy  a  soul." 

As  to  learned  opinions  of  Dekker,  no  one  who  has 
familiarized  himself  with  Dekker's  poetry  will  dispute  the 
opinion  of  Charles  Lamb  that  ''  Dekker  had  poetry  enough 
for  anything." 


310  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

But  the  chief  reason  for  making  him  one  of  the  trium- 
virate of  poets  best  equipped  for  the  position  of  author  of 
the  Shakespeare  poems,  is  based  upon  the  direct  state- 
ments contained  in  the  dramatic  production  which  I  will 
bring  to  the  attention  and  careful  scrutiny  of  the  reader, 
and  also  because  I  beUeve  that  I  can  give  cogent  reasons 
for  the  opinion  that  Dekker  was  either  the  originator  or 
reviser  of  some  of  the  Shakespeare  plays. 

A  play  was  publicly  acted  by  the  students  of  St.  Joh  's 
College,  Cambridge,  in  the  year  1601-2,  called  "The 
Return  from  Parnassus."  The  author  of  it  is  unkno^m. 
It  was  printed  in  1606.  The  play  is  in  part  devoted  to  a 
comparison  of  the  respective  merits  of  the  poets  and 
dramatists  of  that  era. 

In  order  that  the  reader  may  understand  w^ho  were 
named  and  whose  merits  were  discussed,  I  give  here  a 
verbatim  copy  of  so  much  of  the  play  as  mainly  relates 
to  the  consideration  of  the  merits  of  the  poets  named, 
together  with  the  observations  of  the  principal  commen- 
tators who  have  without  question  accepted  Shaksper  as 
the  author  of  the  poems  and  plays.  The  reader  wiU  find 
the  play  in  the  first  volume  of  the  "  Ancient  British  Drama," 
at  page  46.  It  is  entitled  "The  Return  from  Parnassus, 
or  the  Scourge  of  Simony,"  publicly  acted  by  the  students 
of  Saint  John's  College,  in  Cambridge. 

In  Act  1,  Scene  2,  Judicio,  one  of  the  chief  characters, 
speaks  of  a  book  called  "  Belvedere,  or  the  Garden  of  the 
Muses,"  and  he  says  to  Ingenioso,  another  character : 
"Turn  over  the  leaf  and  thou  shalt  see  the  pains  of  this 
worthy  gentleman — sentences  gathered  out  of  all  kinds  of 
poets,  referred  to  certain  methodical  heads.  Read  the 
names." 


THOMAS  DEKKER  CONSIDERED  311 

'^  Ing. — So  I  will,  if  thou  wilt  help  me  to  censure  them 
Edmund  Spenser  Michael  Drayton 

Henry  Constable  John  Davis 

Thomas  Lodge  John  Marston 

Samuel  Daniel  Kit  Marlowe 

Thomas  Watson  _ 

Good  men  and  true  stand  together;  hear  your  censure. 
What's  thy  judgment  of  Spenser? 
Jud. — A  sweeter  swan  than  ever  sang  in  poe, 

A  shriller  nightingale  than  ever  blest 

The  prouder  groves  of  self-admiring  Rome; 

Blithe  was  each  valley  and  each  shepherd  proud 

Wliile  he  did  chant  his  rural  minstrelsy. 
Ing. — Pity  it  is  that  gentle  wits  should  breed, 

Where  thick-skin  choughs  laugh  at  a  scholar's  need. 

But  softly  may  our  honors  ashes  rest, 

That  lie  by  merry  Chaucer's  noble  dust. 

But  I  pray  thee,  proceed  briefly  in  the  censures,  that 
I  may  be  proud  of  myself,  as  in  the  first;  so  in  the  last  my 
censure  may  jump  with  thine.     Henry  Constable,  Samuel 
Daniel,  Thomas  Lodge,  Thomas  Watson. 
Jud. — Sweet  Constable  doth  take  the  wondering  ear 

And  lays  it  up  in  willing  prisonment. 

Sweet  honey-dropping  Daniel  doth  wage 

War  with  the  proudest  big  Italian, 

That  melts  his  heart  in  sugared  sonneting. 

Only  let  him  more  sparingly  make  use 

Of  others'  wit  and  use  his  own  the  more; 

That  well  may  scorn  base  imitation. 

For  Lodge  and  Watson,  men  of  some  desert 

Yet  subject  to  a  critic's  marginal. 

Lodge  for  his  oar  in  every  paper  boat ; 

He  that  turns  over  Galen  every  day 

To  sit  and  simper  Euphues'  legacy. 
Ing. — Michael  Drayton. 

Drayton's  sweet  muse  is  like  a  sanguine  dye 

Able  to  ravish  the  vast  gazer's  eye. 


312  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

However  he  wants  one  true  note  of  a  poet  of  our 
times,  and  that  is  this,  he  can  not  swagger  it  well  in  a 
tavern  nor  domineer  in  a  hothouse." 

Then  after  describing  and  criticising  John  Davis,  Lodge, 
Hudson,  and  John  Marston,  Christopher  Marlowe  and 
Benjamin  Jonson,  Ingenioso  calls  out:  ''William  Shake- 
speare," and  Judicio  says: 

"Who  loves  Adonis'  love  or  Lucrece'  rape, 
His  sweeter  verse  contains  heart-robbing  life. 
Could  but  a  graver  subject  him  content, 
Without  love's  foolish  lazy  languishment." 

Here  is  recognition  of  a  man  styled  William  Shakespeare 
as  the  author  of  the  two  poems. 

Farther  on  in  Act  4,  Scene  3,  there  is  a  dialogue  between 
two  noted  actors,  Burbage  and  Will  Kempe,  two  other 
characters  of  the  play,  and  Kempe  says,  "I  was  once  at  a 
comedy  in  Cambridge  and  there  I  saw  a  parasite  make 
faces  and  mouths  of  all  sorts  on  this  fashion."  Burbage 
replies,  "A  little  teaching  will  mend  these  faults  and  it 
may  be  besides  they  will  be  able  to  pen  a  part.''  And 
Kempe  answers,  "Few  of  the  University  pen  plays  well; 
they  smell  too  much  of  that  writer  Ovid  and  that  writer 
Metamorphosis,  and  talk  too  much  of  Proserpine  and 
Jupiter.  Why  here's  our  fellow  Shakespeare  puts  them 
all  down,  aye  and  Ben  Jonson  too.  0,  that  Ben  Jonson 
is  a  pestilent  fellow;  he  brought  up  Horace,  giving  the 
poets  a  pill,  but  our  fellow  Shakespeare  hath  given  him  a 
purge,  that  made  him  bewray  his  credit. 

"  Burh. — It's  a  shrewd  fellow  indeed." 

Malone,  who  did  much  to  lead  astray  all  succeeding 
commentators  as  to  the  authorship  of  the  plays,  says: 
"  In  what  manner  Shakespeare  put  Jonson  down  does  not 


THOMAS  DEKKER  CONSIDERED.  313 

appear,  nor  does  it  appear  how  he  made  him  bewray  his 
credit.  His  retahation,  we  may  well  be  assured,  contained 
no  gross  or  illiberal  attack  and  perhaps  did  not  go  beyond 
a  ballad  or  an  epigram." 

Malone  admits  in  the  foregoing  that  nowhere  in  all  of 
the  Shakespeare  writings  does  it  appear  that  the  Shake- 
speare of  the  poems  and  plays  made  Jonson  bewTay  his 
credit;  and  then  he  guesses  that  he,  Shaksper,  may  have 
wTitten  a  ballad  or  epigram  against  Jonson.  He  also 
guesses  that  if  he  did  write  one,  that  it  contained  nothing 
"gross  or  illiberal."  The  disinterested  reader,  I  am  sure, 
will  not  care  very  much  for  Malone's  guesses.  He  will 
fairly  draw  this  inference  from  his  statements,  that  with 
all  his  research,  he,  ^lalone,  could  fmd  nothing  in  the 
so-called  Shakespeare  plays  and  poems  which  reflected 
upon  or  alluded  to  Jonson;  and  no  one,  not  even  the  most 
rabid  believer  in  Shaksper,  pretends  that  any  trace  of  any 
writings  whatever  of  William  Shaksper  (except  his  signa- 
tures to  certain  legal  papers)  has  been  fomid  either  by 
Malone  or  any  one  else. 

In  Gilford's  Memoir  of  Ben  Jonson,  attached  to  his 
plays,  the  Kempe  and  Burbage  dialogue  is  introduced 
together  with  the  remarks  of  Malone  above  quoted,  "  That 
perhaps  the  retaliation  did  not  go  beyond  a  ballad  or  an 
epigram."  And  then  Gilford,  who  did  not  like  Malone's 
fling  at  Jonson,  adds  the  following :  "  But  with  Mr.  Malone's 
leave,  if  it  went  as  far  as  either,  Shakespeare  was  greatly 
to  be  blamed,  for  Jonson  had  given  him  no  offense  what- 
ever. I  will  take  upon  myself  to  affirm  that  the  Poetaster, 
a  play  of  Jonson's  which  contains  an  attack  upon  two 
contemporary  dramatists,  and  particularly  upon  one  of 
them  who  is  dubbed  'The  Poetaster/  does  not  contain  a 


314  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

single  passage  that  can  be  tortured  by  the  utmost  inge- 
nuity of  mahceinto  a  reflection  on  our  great  poet.  It  will 
scarcely  be  credited  that  the  sentence  last  quoted  (i.  e. 
from  Malone)  should  be  immediately  followed  by  these 
words:  Shakespeare  has,  however,  marked  his  disregard 
for  the  calumniator  of  his  fame,  by  not  leaving  him  any 
memorial  by  his  will." 

I  find,  and  the  most  energetic  searcher  of  Shakespearean 
essays,  comments,  and  criticisms  will  find,  that  Malone 
was  the  leader  of  the  host  of  Shakespearean  critics  and 
commentators  and  that  generally  his  opinions  and  guesses, 
however  wild  and  unreliable,  have  found  favor  with  the 
believers  in  the  William  Shaksper  of  Stratford.  He, 
Malone,  was  the  brilliant  and  fierce  exposer  of  Ireland's 
forgeries;  and  he  was  also  the  builder  and  strong  supporter 
of  the  baseless  fabric  on  which  the  Shaksper  claim  of 
authorship  rests.  Hence,  when  Malone  resorts  to  guesses 
and  surmises  as  to  the  attack  by  Jonson  and  the  retaliation 
by  Shakespeare,  all  the  critics  and  commentators  blindly 
follow  his  lead,  and  guess  and  surmise  just  as  he  did. 

It  is  clearly  shown,  and  all  students  of  the  plays  and 
poems  will  admit,  that  a  careful  reading  and  study  of  the 
play  called  The  Return  from  Parnassus  will  show  that 
as  early  as  1601  it  was  believed  that  a  person  styled 
"Shakespeare"  was  the  author  of  the  two  poems  called 
Venus  and  Adonis  and  the  Rape  of  Lucrece,  for  when 
Ingcnioso  calls  out,  "William  Shakespeare,"  Judicio 
answers,  referring  unquestionably  to  Shakespeare, 

"Who  loves  Adonis'  love  or  Lucrece'  rape. 
His  sweeter  verse  contains  heart-robbing  life. 
Could  but  a  graver  subject  him  content. 
Without  love's  foolish  lazy  languishment." 


THOMAS  DEKKER  CONSIDERED.  315 

It  is  also  as  clearly  shown  from  the  dialogue  between 
Kempe  and  Burbage  that  "the  pestilent  fellow,"  Ben 
Jonson,  had  brought  up  Horace,  giving  the  poets  a  pill, 
and  that  the  shrewd  fellow  called  Shakespeare  had  given 
Jonson  a  purge  which  had  made  him  bewray  his  credit. 

Now  when,  where,  and  how  did  Jonson  bring  up  Horace, 
giving  the  poets  a  pill,  and  who  was  the  poet  referred  to 
as  giving  Jonson  a  purge? 

I  mamtain  that  the  bringing  up  of  Horace  undoubtedly 
refers  to  the  comical  satire  in  the  nature  of  the  play  com- 
posed by  Jonson  in  1600,  called  ''The  Poetaster  and  his 
arraignment,"  which  was  acted  in  1600  and  1601  by  the 
children  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  Chapel. 

Whalley,  in  his  life  of  Jonson,  says  that  there  was  at 
this  time  a  quarrel  between  Jonson  and  Dekker,  and 
Dekker  was  personally  alluded  to  in  this  play  under  the 
character  of  Crispinus.  Dekker  was  bent  on  revenge  and 
resolved,  if  possible,  to  conquer  Jonson  at  his  own  weapons; 
for  immediately  after  the  rendition  of  the  Poetaster,  he 
wrote  a  play  entitled  "  Satiro-mastix,  or  the  untrussing  of 
the  humorous  poet,"  and  in  this  play  Jonson  is  introduced 
under  the  character  of  Horace  Junior.  That  the  reader 
may  see  the  force  of  my  contention,  I  quote  from  Act  5, 
Scene  3  of  the  Poetaster,  premising  that  Horace,  whom 
Jonson  brought  up  as  a  chief  character  in  the  play,  thus 
addresses  Csesar,  who  sits  as  judge  over  Dekker,  alias 
Crispinus : 

"  Please  it,  Great  Csesar,  I  have  pills  about  me. 
Mixt  with  the  whitest  kind  of  hellebore 
Would  give  him  a  light  vomit  that  should  purge 
His  brain  and  stomach  of  those  tumorous  heats 
Might  I  have  leave  to  minister  unto  him." 


316  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Thereupon  the  leave  is  given  by  Csesar  to  Horace,  and 
he  administers  the  pill  to  Crispinus,  who  casts  up  his 
affected,  long,  and  uncommon  words — such  words  as 
"retrograde,  reciprocal,  incubus,  magnificate,  turgidous, 
ventositous,  prorumpted,"  words  very  much  like  some 
that  are  used  in  Troilus  and  Cressida, 

That  Dekker  was  fond  of  great  swelling  words  will 
appear  from  a  cursory  examination  of  his  writings.  I  find 
in  them  such  words  as  "  anthropophagized,  apishness, 
authentical,  calcination,  cibation,  circumgitations,  cir- 
cumgyrations, congelation,  contentation,  disquietness,  gal- 
enist,  encomiastic,  enginous,  inexorability,  inquinations, 
Mephistophelian,  niggardize,  Paracelsian,  phantasticality, 
paradoxical,  Phlegetontic,  quadrupartite,  repercussive, 
sublimation,  unthrif tiness. ' ' 

If  the  reader  will  now  turn  to  the  play  of  "Satiro- 
mastix,"  written  by  Thomas  Dekker  in  reply  to  Jonson's 
play,  and  publicly  acted  by  the  children  of  St.  Paul's  in 
ridicule  of  Jonson,  he  will  find  how  a  poetical  purge  was 
administered  by  Dekker  to  Jonson  which  made  him 
bewray  his  credit. 

Crispinus,  alias  Dekker,  says  in  the  arraignment  of 
Horace,  alias  Ben  Jonson: 

"  Under  control  of  my  dread  sovereign. 
We  are  thy  judges;  thou  that  didst  arraign, 
Art  now  prepared  for  condemnation; 
Should  I  but  bid  thy  Muse  stand  to  the  Bar, 
Thyself  against  her  wouldst  give  evidence 
For  flat  rebellion  'gainst  the  sacred  laws 
Of  divine  poesy:  herein  most  she  missed. 
Thy  pride  and  scorn  made  her  turn  Satirist, 
And  not  her  love  to  virtue  (as  thou  preachest) 


THOMAS  DEKKER  CONSIDERED.  317 

Or  should  we  minister  strong  pills  to  thee, 

^Yh.a.t  lumps  of  hard  and  undigested  stuff, 

Of  bitter  satirism,  of  arrogance 

Of  Self-Love,  of  detraction,  of  a  black 

And  stinking  insolence,  should  we  fetch  up? 

But  none  of  these,  we  give  thee  what's  more  fit, 

With  stinging  nettles,  crown  his  stinging  wit." 

His  sentence  w^as  as  follows : 

"Im'primis  you  shall  swear  by  Phoebus  and  the  half  a 
score  Muses,  lacking  one;  not  to  swear  to  hang  yourself, 
if  you  thought  any  man,  woman,  or  child  could  write  plays 
and  rhymes,  as  well  favored  ones  as  yourself,  you  shall 
swear  not  to  bombast  out  a  new  play  with  the  old  linings 
of  jests  stolen  from  the  Temple  revels.  Moreover,  you  shall 
not  sit  in  a  gallery,  when  your  comedies  and  interludes 
have  entered  their  actions  and  there  make  vile  and  bad 
faces  at  every  line,  to  make  gentlemen  have  an  eye  to  you 
and  to  make  players  afraid  to  take  your  part. 

Besides,  you  must  forbear  to  venture  on  the  stage, 
when  your  play  is  ended,  and  to  exchange  courtesies  and 
compliments  with  gallants  in  the  Lords'  room,  to  make 
all  the  house  rise  up  in  arms  and  to  cry  'that's  Horace, 
that's  he,  that's  he,  that's  he,  that  pens  and  purges  humors 
and  diseases.' 

Thirdly  and  lastly  of  all  save  one,  when  your  plays  are 
misliked  at  Court,  you  shall  not  cry  Mew,  like  a  pussy  cat, 
and  say  you  are  glad  you  write  out  of  the  courtiers'  ele- 
ment. In  briefness,  when  you  sup  in  taverns  amongst 
your  betters,  you  shall  swear  not  to  dip  your  manners  in 
too  much  sauce;  not  at  table  to  fling  epigrams,  emblems, 
or  play  speeches  about  you  (like  hail  stones)  to  keep  you 
out  of  the  terrible  danger  of  the  shot,  upon  pain  to  sit  at 
the  upper  end  of  the  table  at  the  left  hand  of  Carlo  Buff  on; 
swear  all  this  by  Apollo  and  the  eight  or  nine  Muses. 

Horace. — By  Apollo,  Helicon,  the  Muses  (who  march 
three  and  three  in  rank),  and  by  all  that  belongs  to  Par- 
nassus, I  swear  all  this. 


318  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Crispinus. — That  fearful  wreath  this  honor  is   your  due 
All  poets  shall  be  poet-apes,  but  you." 

In  this  connection  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  so  power- 
fully operative  was  Dekker's  purge  as  administered  to 
Jonson,  that  the  latter  was  forced  to  issue  an  apologetical 
dialogue,  in  the  course  of  which  he  says : 

"  And  since  the  comic  Muse 
Hath  proved  so  onerous  to  me,  I  will  try 
If  tragedy  have  a  more  kind  aspect." 

The  allusion  to  Shakespeare  as  the  administerer  of  the 
purge  to  Jonson,  seems  to  be  a  direct  and  clear  designation 
of  Thomas  Dekker  as  Shakespeare.  It  is  admitted  by  the 
commentators  that  William  Shaksper  never  had  to  their 
knowledge  any  controversy  whatever  with  Jonson.  The 
editor  of  the  ''Ancient  British  Drama,"  when  introducing 
to  the  reader  The  Return  from  Parnassus,  or  the  Scourge 
of  Simony,  says : 

"  The  Return  from  Parnassus,  or  the  Scourge  of  Simony, 
was  publicly  acted,  as  the  title  page  bears,  by  the  students 
of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge.  It  is  a  most  extrava- 
gant, but  a  very  curious  performance.  Hawkins,  in  his 
preface  to  the  'Origin  of  the  English  Drama,'  says:  'It  is 
perhaps  the  most  singular  composition  in  the  English  lan- 
guage.' The  admirers  of  Shakespeare  will  be  interested 
by  the  mention  made  of  him  in  the  scene  where  Kempe 
and  Burbage,  his  fellow  actors,  discourse  of  his  quarrel 
with  Ben  Jonson.  It  would  seem  that  Shakespeare  had 
espoused  the  cause  of  Dekker,  in  the  dispute  between  him 
and  Jonson;  though  we  may  look  in  vain  for  the  'pill' 
given  to  the  latter  by  the  Bard  of  Avon." 


THOMAS  DEKKER  CONSIDERED.  319 

Of  course,  the  reader  will  understand  that  the  state- 
ment of  the  editor  that  "  it  would  seem  that  Shaksper  had 
espoused  the  cause  of  Dekker"  is  a  mere  guess  on  the 
editor's  part,  since  he  declares  that  it  is  in  vain  to  look 
for  the  pill  given  to  Jonson  by  Shaksper. 

Ingleby,  in  his  "Century  of  Praise,"  after  quoting  from 
the  Return  from  Parnassus,  says:  ''The  passage,  '0 
that  Ben  Jonson  is  a  pestilent  fellow;  he  brought  up 
Horace,  giving  the  poets  a  pill'  alludes  to  Jonson's  Poet- 
aster, Act  5,  Scene  3.  The  subsequent  remark,  'but  our 
fellow  Shakespeare  hath  given  him  a  purge  that  made  him 
bewray  his  credit'  is  mysterious.  Where  did  our  Bard 
put  Jonson  to  his  purgation?  Assuredly  neither  Stephano 
nor  Malvolio  could  have  been  a  caricature  of  Jonson,  who 
was  neither  a  sot  nor  a  gull." 

There  is  nothing  mysterious  about  the  giving  of  the 
purge,  if  we  consider  first  that  Shaksper  was  not  referred 
to  at  all,  and  that  Thomas  Dekker  was  the  man  who  gave 
Jonson  the  purge.  The  facts  prove  that  Thomas  Dekker, 
and  Thomas  Dekker  only,  administered  the  poetical  purge 
to  Jonson,  for  the  two  plays  and  the  contemporary  history 
so  shows  it.  The  Cambridge  play  also  states  that  the  two 
poems  called  Venus  and  Adonis  and  the  Rape  of  Lucrece 
were  written  by  Shakespeare,  so-called,  who  gave  the 
purge  to  Jonson.  If,  therefore,  the  statements  contained 
in  the  play  called  The  Return  from  Parnassus  are 
reliable,  then  they  identify  Thomas  Dekker  as  the  Shake- 
speare who  wrote  the  two  poems,  for  the  reason  that  it 
was  Dekker  who  gave  Jonson  the  purge  which  made  him 
bewray  his  credit. 

To  test  the  reliability  of  Ingenioso,  the  Introducer,  and 
Judicio,  the  Judge,  I  point  the  student  to  the  criticisms 


320  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

passed  upon  Spenser,  Drayton,  Marlowe,  and  Marston. 
Every  reader  will  agree  with  me  that  their  characters  and 
standing  as  poets  are  truthfully  delineated  in  the  play. 
The  students  at  Cambridge  recognized  the  description 
given  of  Drayton  as  a  just  and  truthful  one,  and  Marston 
was  known  among  his  brother  poets  as  "Kinsayder,"  the 
nickname  given  to  him  in  the  Cambridge  play. 

It  maybe  objected  that  in  the  play  Dekker  didnot  admin- 
ister a  pill  or  purge  to  Jonson,  but  gave  him  a  crown  of 
stinging  nettles.  Literally  speaking,  that  is  true.  But 
the  WTiter  of  the  play  was  not  required,  like  a  historian, 
to  be  accurate.  Jonson  administered  the  pills  to  Dekker 
and  Dekker  put  a  wreath  of  stinging  nettles  on  Jonson's 
head,  and  the  purge  he  gave  him  was  the  oath  he  com- 
pelled him  to  take.  Yet  it  was  a  dreadful  purge  to  Jonson, 
for  he  had  to  apologize  to  the  literary  public  for  what  he 
wrote  in  the  Poetaster. 

In  further  confirmation  of  Jonson's  jealousy  and  his 
intense  hatred  of  one  of  the  contemporary  poets,  I  here 
copy  a  short  poem  of  Jonson  found  among  his  Epi- 
grams. 

ON    POET-APE. 

"  Poor  Poet-ape,  that  would  be  thought  our  chief, 
^ATiose  words  are  e'n  the  frippery  of  wit, 
From  brokage  is  become  so  bold  a  thief. 
As  we,  the  robbed,  leave  rage  and  pity  it. 
At  first,  he  made  low  shifts,  would  pick  and  glean, 
Buy  the  rerversion  of  old  plays ;  now  grown 
To  a  little  wealth,  and  credit  in  the  scene. 
He  takes  up  all,  makes  each  man's  wit  his  own; 
And  told  of  this,  he  slights  it.     Tut,  such  crimes 
The  sluggish  gaping  auditor  devours; 


THOMAS  DEKKER  CONSIDERED.  321 

He  marks  not  whose  'twas  first;  and  after-times 
May  judge  it  to  be  his,  as  well  as  ours. 
Fool !  as  if  half  eyes  will  not  know  a  fleece 
From  locks  of  wool  or  shreds  from  the  whole  piece." 

The  reader  knows,  of  course,  that  the  advocates  for 
Bacon  contend  that  these  lines  refer  to  William  Shaksper, 
and  that  he  was  ridiculed  by  Jonson  in  the  above  as  a 
poet-ape.  But  they  overlook  the  fact  that  the  poem 
points  to  a  poet-ape  as  one  who  "would  be  thought  our 
chief";  that  is  to  say,  the  leader  of  the  poets,  an  aspirant 
for  the  foremost  place,  and  one  who  was  a  reviser,  a  mender 
and  dresser  of  plays. 

If  William  Shaksper  could  scarcely  write  his  own  name, 
as  the  facts  show,  he  could  not  aspire  to  be  the  chief  poet 
among  so  many  learned  dramatists.  Jonson,  alias  Horace, 
is  made  to  point  out  Dekker,  alias  Crispinus,  as  one  of  the 
twin  poet-apes  in  Satiro-mastix,  when  he  says :  "  Here  be 
epigrams  upon  Tucca.  Divulge  these  among  the  gallants; 
as  for  Crispinus,  that  Crispinass,  and  Fannius,  his  play- 
dresser,  who,  to  make  the  Muses  believe  their  subjects' 
ears  were  starved  and  that  there  was  a  dearth  of  poesy, 
cut  an  innocent  Moor  in  the  middle  and  served  him  in 
twice;  as  for  these  twins,  these  poet-apes,  their  mimic 
tricks  shall  serve  with  mirth  to  feast  our  Muse,  whilst  their 
own  starve."  Besides,  Jonson  himself,  in  the  Poetaster, 
shows  that  Dekker  was  one  of  the  men  aimed  at  in  his 
play.  In  Scene  3  of  Act  5,  the  indictment  against  Dekker, 
joined  with  Demetrius  Fannius,  reads  thus  in  part:  "You 
are  before  this  time  jointly  and  severally  indicted  and  here 
presented  to  be  arraigned  upon  the  statute  of  calumny, 
or  lex  remnia,  the  one  by  the  name  of  Rufus  Laberius 
Crispinus,    alias    Crispinas,    poetaster    and    plagiary;  the 


322  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

other  by  the  name  of  Demetrius  Fannius,  play  dresser 
and  plagiary." 

Who  was  the  poet-ape  referred  to  by  Jonson?  I  think 
that  it  could  not  have  been  Dekker,  for  the  reason  that 
so  far  as  we  know  anything  of  Dekker's  pecuniary  condi- 
tion, he  lived,  to  quote  a  familiar  phrase,  from  hand  to 
mouth,  and  the  reader  will  notice  that  the  poet-ape  is 
"now  grown  to  a  little  wealth." 

It  could  not  have  been  John  Marston,  whom  the  Shak- 
sperites  describe  as  one  of  the  two  parcel  poets  whom 
Jonson  satirized,  because  Marston  dedicated  the  Malcon- 
tent, published  in  1604,  to  Jonson  in  the  following  words: 

.    ' '  Ben j  amino  Jonsonio ' ' 

Poetae 

Elegantissimo 

Carissimo 

Amico 

suo  candido  et  cordato 

Johannes  Marston 

Musarum  Alumnus 

Asperam  hanc  suam  Thaliam. 

D.  D. 

Some  of  the  commentators  identify  Crispinus  as  Marston 
and  Fannius  as  Dekker,  and  others  reverse  the  names. 
I  reject  Marston  because  elsewhere  he  is  ridiculed  by 
Jonson  as  Carlo  Buffon. 

While  the  solution  of  this  question  is  not  very  impor- 
tant, I  opine  that  Michael  Drayton  was  one  of  the  twins 
aimed  at  by  Horace.  He  was  a  poet  who  had  a  right  to 
be  "and  would  be  thought  our  chief,"  and  as  to  a  little 
wealth,  the  reader  will  remember  that  Daniel,  in  his  letter 
to  Egerton,  describes  Drayton   as  "the  author  of  plays 


THOMAS  DEKKER  CONSIDERED.  323 

now  daily  presented  on  the  public  stages  of  London  and 
the  possessor  of  no  small  gains."  The  reader  will  also 
call  to  mind  the  fact  that  Jonson  was  not  regarded  by  his 
contemporaries  as  an  admirer  of  Drayton.  Jonson  him- 
self, in  that  poem  which  he  called  his'' Vision  on  the  Muses 
of  his  friend  Michael  Drayton,"  admits  that  such  was  the 
popular  opinion,  for  at  the  very  beginning  of  the  poem 
he  says: 

"  It  hath  been  questioned,  Michael,  if  I  be 
A  friend  at  all,  or  if  at  all,  to  thee." 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

MICHAEL   DRAYTON   CONSIDERED. 

"  This  was  a  man." 

—Julius  Caesar,  v,  5. 

The  reader  unfamiliar  with  the  details  of  Drayton's 
life  will  be  struck  with  the  similarity  as  to  its  facts  to  the 
traditional  account  of  Shaksper's  life.  Michael  Drayton 
was  born  at  Hartshill  in  Warwickshire  in  or  near  the 
Forest  of  Arden  in  the  year  1563.  Shaksper  was  born  in 
the  same  county,  Warwickshire,  in  the  year  1564.  Aubrey, 
in  his  manuscript  kept  in  the  Ashmolean  Museum,  says 
that  Shaksper's  father  was  a  butcher.  The  same  Aubrey 
says  that  Michael  Drayton  was  the  son  of  a  butcher. 
Rowe  says  that  Shaksper  was  w^ithdrawn  from  a  grammar 
school  at  an  early  age.  Drayton  was  educated  at  the 
free  Grammar  School  of  Atherstone.  In  his  poetical 
epistle  to  Reynolds,  he  says  of  himself: 

"  For  from  my  cradle,  you  must  know  that  I 
Was  still  inclined  to  noble  poesy, 
And  when  that  once  Pueriles  I  had  read, 
And  newly  had  my  Cato  construed. 
In  my  small  self  I  greatly  marveled  then, 
Amongst  all  other,  what  strange  kind  of  men 
These  poets  w^re;  and  pleased  with  the  name, 
To  my  mild  tutor  merrily  I  came 
(For  I  was  then  a  proper  goodly  page. 
Much  like  a  pigmy,  scarce  ten  years  of  age). 
Clasping  my  slender  arms  about  his  thigh, 
'0,  my  dear  master!  can  not  you,'  quoth  I, 
'Make  me  a  poet?     Do  it  if  you  can, 
And  you  shall  see  I'll  quickly  be  a  man.' 


MICHAEL    DRAYTON    CONSIDERED.  325 

Who  me  thus  answered,  smihng,  'Boy/  quoth  he, 
'  If  you'll  not  play  the  wag,  but  I  may  see 
You  ply  your  learning,  I  will  shortly  read 
Some  poets  to  you."' 

Drayton's  education,  as  heretofore  stated,  was  fostered 
by  Sir  Henr}'  Goodere,  of  Polesworth,  and  Sir  Walter 
Aston,  of  Blythe  Hall.  He  was  also  greatly  aided  by  the 
Countess  of  Bedford. 

That  his  tutor  was  right  in  regarding  him  as  of  a  waggish 
disposition  is  supported  by  the  expression  applied  to  him  by 
Meres,  borrowed  from  First  Henry  IV,  A.  2,  S.  4:  "There 
is  nothing  but  roguery  to  be  found  in  villainous  man." 

The  dramatic  works  of  Drayton  will  be  first  considered, 
my  chief  authority  being  the  reliable  Diary  of  Henslowe. 
Within  the  short  space  of  five  years,  Drayton  wrote  or 
assisted  in  the  composition  of  twenty  plays  for  Henslowe's 
theatre.  I  wiU  specify  the  names  of  the  plays  and  the 
dates  when  they  were  begun  or  finished,  as  they  truth- 
fully but  ungrammatically  appear  in  the  Diary. 

On  December  22,  1597,  in  conjunction  with  .Anthony 
Monday,  he  WTOte  the  play  of  Mother  Redcap.  On  Jan- 
uary 20,  1598,  he  wrote  the  play  of  William  Longsword. 
On  March  3,  1598,  aided  by  Thomas  Dekker  and  Henry 
Chettle,  he  wrote  the  Famous  Wars  of  Henry  1st  and  the 
Prince  of  Wales.  On  March  13,  1598,  the  entry  m  the 
Diary  shows  that  he  wrote  with  Henry  Chettle  a  play,  as 
Henslowe  styles  it,  "^\^lere  a  Welshman  Appears."  On 
March  30,  1598,  with  Thomas  Dekker,  Henry  Chettle,  and 
Robert  Wilson,  he  wrote  Piers  of  Exton.  On  May  22, 
1598,  collaborating  with  Thomas  Dekker,  Thomas  Middle- 
ton,  and  John  Webster,  he  wrote  the  Black  Batman  of 
the  North.     On  June  10,   1598,  he  wrote  Earl  Goodwin 


326  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

and  his  Three  Sons,  with  the  aid  of  Thomas  Dekker,  Henry 
Chettle,  and  Robert  Wilson.  On  June  24,  1598,  together 
with  Anthony  Monday,  Henry  Chettle,  and  Robert  Wilson, 
he  wrote  Richard  Cceur  de  Leon's  Funeral.  On  July  1, 
1598,  aided  by  Thomas  Dekker  and  Robert  Wilson,  he 
wTote  the  play  of  Madman's  Morris.  On  July  17,  1598, 
assisted  by  the  same  two  dramatists,  he  wrote  Hannibal 
and  Hermes.  On  August  9,  1598,  he  and  Anthony  Mon- 
day wrote  a  comedy  for  the  Court,  the  name  of  which 
Henslowe  omits.  On  August  10,  1598,  he  wrote  Pierce  of 
Winchester,  with  the  help  of  Thomas  Dekker  and  Robert 
Wilson.  On  August  25,  1598,  in  conjunction  with  Anthony 
Monday,  Robert  Wilson,  and  Thomas  Dekker,  he  wrote 
Chance  Medley.  On  August  30,  1598,  he  and  Dekker 
wrote  the  play  of  Worse  Afraid  than  Hurt.  On  September 
29,  1598,  Dekker  and  he  composed  the  first  part  of  The 
Civil  Wars  in  France.  On  October  16,  1598,  the  two  also 
wrote  the  play  of  Conan,  Prince  of  Denmark.  On  Novem- 
ber 3,  1598,  they  also  wrote  the  second  and  third  parts  of 
the  Civil  Wars  in  France.  Collaborating  with  Anthony 
Monday,  Robert  Wilson,  and  Richard  Hathaway,  on 
January  10,  1599,  he  -RTote  Owen  Tudor.  On  October 
16,  1599,  he  produced  the  famous  play  of  Sir  John  Old- 
castle,  assisted  by  Anthony  Monday,  Robert  Wilson,  and 
Richard  Hathaway.  On  June  3,  1600,  with  Thomas 
Dekker  and  Richard  Hathaway,  he  composed  the  play  of 
Fair  Constance  of  Rome.  On  October  10,  1601,  he  wrote 
the  Rising  of  Cardinal  Wolsey,  in  collaboration  with 
Anthony  Monday,  Henry  Chettle,  and  Wentworth  Smyth. 
On  May  22,  1602,  aided  by  Anthony  Monday,  Thomas 
Middleton,  and  John  Webster,  he  wrote  the  play  of  Caesar's 
Fall.     On  May  29,  1602,  he  wrote  a  play,  the  title  of  which 


MICHAEL   DRAYTON   CONSIDERED.  327 

is  very  badly  spelled  in  the  Diary,  but  it  appears  to  be  the 
Two  Harpies  or  Harps.  In  the  composition  of  this  play 
he  was  assisted  by  Dekker,  Middleton,  Monday,  and 
Webster. 

That  he  was  a  famous  writer  of  tragedies,  is  stated  by 
Barnfield  in  his  "  Remembrances  of  some  English  Poets" 
heretofore  quoted;  and  Samuel  Daniel,  in  his  letter  to 
Egerton,  set  out  in  Chapter  XI,  speaks  of  him  as  "the 
author  of  plays  now  daily  presented  on  the  public  stages 
of  London";  and  he  himself  modestly  refers,  in  the  47th 
stanza  of  his  "Idea,"  to  the  time  "when  high  desire  of 
wit  gave  life  and  courage  to  my  laboring  pen." 

A  summary  of  his  poetical  works,  other  than  dramatic, 
extends  from  1591  to  1630.  They  embrace  the  Harmony 
of  the  Church,  Idea's  Mirror,  The  Shepherd's  Garland  in 
nine  Eclogues,  Matilda,  the  Barons'  Wars,  Endymion  and 
Phoebe,  Legend  of  Robert  the  Duke  of  Normandy,  Poems, 
lyric  and  pastoral.  Odes,  Eclogues,  The  Man  in  the  Moon, 
The  Battle  of  Agincourt,  and  Polyolbion. 

I  will  now  give  several  specimens  of  his  style.  I  cite 
two  sonnets  composed  by  him,  the  first  to  the  river 
Ankor: 

"  Clear  Ankor,  on  whose  silver-sanded  shore 
My  soul-shrined  saint,  my  fair  Idea,  lies; 
0  blessed  brook,  whose  milk-white  swans  adore 
The  crystal  stream  refined  by  her  eyes. 
Where  sweet  myrrh-breathing  zephyr  in  the  spring 
Gently  distils  his  nectar-dropping  showers, 
AATiere  nightingales  in  Arden  sit  and  sing 
Amongst  the  dainty  dew-impearled  flowers. 
Say  thus,  fair  brook,  when  thou  shalt  see  thy  Queen, 
Lo,  here  thy  shepherd  spent  his  wandering  years, 
And  in  these  shades,  dear  nymph,  he  oft  hath  been, 


328  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

And  here  to  thee  he  sacrificed  his  tears: 
Fair  Arden,  thou  my  Tempe  art  alone 
And  thou,  sweet  Ankor,  art  my  Hehcon." 

The  next  one  is  his  last  farewell  to  his  lady-love : 

"Since  there's  no  help,  come  let  us  kiss  and  part, 

Nay  I  have  done,  you  get  no  more  of  me; 

And  I  am  glad,  yea,  glad  with  all  my  heart 

That  thus  so  cleanly  I  myself  can  free ; 

Shake  hands  forever,  cancel  all  our  vows, 

And  when  we  meet  at  any  time  again, 

Be  it  not  seen  in  either  of  our  brows 

That  we  one  jot  of  former  love  retain; 

Now  at  the  last  gasp  of  Love's  latest  breath, 

When,  his  pulse  failing,  passion  speechless  lies. 

When  faith  is  kneeling  by  his  bed  of  death 

And  innocence  is  closing  up  his  eyes. 
Now  if  thou  wouldst,  when  all  have  given  him  over 
From  death  to  life  thou  might'st  him  yet  recover." 

These  two  sonnets  are  unsurpassed  in  the  whole  range 
of  English  literature. 

The  following  poem,  never  before  published,  was 
written  by  Drayton  on  the  night  before  he  died: 

"  So  well  I  love  thee  that  without  thee  I 
Love  nothing:  if  I  might  choose,  I'd  rather  die 
Than  be  one  day  debarr'd  thy  company. 

Since  beasts  and  plants  do  grow  and  live  and  move. 
Beasts  are  those  men  that  such  a  life  approve. 
He  only  lives  that  deadly  is  in  love. 

The  corn  that  in  the  ground  is  sown,  first  dies 

And  of  one  seed,  do  many  ears  arise; 

Love,  this  world's  corn,  by  dying  multiplies. 


MICHAEL    DRAYTON    CONSIDERED.  329 

The  seeds  of  love  first  by  thy  eyes  were  thrown 

Into  a  ground  untilled,  a  heart  unknown 

To  bear  such  fruit,  till  by  thy  hands  was  sown. 

Look,  as  your  looking  glass  by  chance  may  fall, 
Divide  and  break  in  many  pieces  small, 
And  yet  show  forth  the  selfsame  face  in  all. 

Proportions,  features,  graces  just  the  same 
And  in  the  smallest  piece,  as  well  the  name 
Of  fairest  one  discerns,  as  in  the  richest  frame. 

So  all  my  thoughts  are  pieces  but  of  you 

Which  put  together  makes  a  glass  so  true, 

As  I  therein  no  other  face  but  yours  can  view." 

The  description  of  Oberon's  palace  in  Nymphidia  is 
worthy  of  the  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  and  recalls 
Mercutio's  description  of  Queen  Mab: 

''This  palace  standeth  in  the  air 
By  necromancy  placed  there. 
That  it  no  tempest  needs  to  fear. 
Which  way  soe'er  it  blow  it. 
And  somewhat  southward  tow'rds  the  moon. 
Whence  lies  a  way  up  to  the  moon; 
And  thence  the  fairy  can  as  soon 
Pass  to  the  earth  below  it. 

The  walls  of  spiders'  legs  are  made. 
Well  mortised  and  finely  laid; 
It  was  the  master  of  his  trade 
It  curiously  that  builded; 
The  windows  of  the  eyes  of  cats. 
And  for  the  roof,  instead  of  slats, 
Is  covered  with  the  skins  of  bats 
With  moonshine  that  are  gilded." 


330  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Before  lea\diig  Nymphiclia,  I  inxdte  the  reader's  atten- 
tion to  the  following  extract  from  the  same  poem.  Oberon, 
the  King  of  the  fairies,  is  chasing  Queen  Mab,  who  is  in 
love  with  the  fairy  Knight  Pigi^'iggin : 

"  But  let  us  leave  Queen  Mab  awhile, 
Through  many  a  gate,  o'er  many  a  stile, 
That  now  had  gotten  by  his  wile, 

Her  dear  Pigwiggin  kissing; 
And  tell  how  Oberon  doth  fare, 
Who  grew  as  mad  as  any  hare 
"WTien  he  had  sought  each  place  with  care 
And  found  his  Queen  was  missing. 

By  grisly  Pluto  he  doth  swear, 

He  rent  his  clothes  and  tore  his  hair. 

And  as  he  nmneth  here  and  there 

An  acorn  cup  he  greeteth, 
^^^lich  soon  he  taketh  by  the  stalk, 
About  his  head  he  lets  it  walk, 
Nor  doth  he  any  creature  balk, 

But  lays  on  all  he  meeteth. 

The  Tuscan  Poet  doth  advance 
The  frantic  Paladin  of  France, 
And  those  more  ancient  do  enhance 

Alcides  in  his  fury, 
And  others  Ajax  Telamon, 
But  to  this  time  there  hath  been  none 
So  Bedlam  as  our  Oberon, 

Of  which  I  dare  assure  ye. 

And  first  encountering  with  a  Wasp, 
He  in  his  arms  the  fly  doth  clasp 
As  though  his  breath  he  forth  would  grasp. 
Him  for  Pig^-iggin  taking: 


MICHAEL    DRAYTON    CONSIDERED.  331 

'Where  is  my  wife,  thou  rogue?'  quoth  he; 
'  Pigwiggin,  she  is  come  to  thee ; 
Restore  her,  or  thou  diest  by  me ! ' 
Whereat  the  poor  Wasp  quaking 

Cries,  '  Oberon,  great  Fairy  King, 
Content  thee,  I  am  no  such  thing : 
I  am  a  Wasp,  behold  my  sting!' 

At  which  the  Fairy  started; 
When  soon  away  the  Wasp  doth  go, 
Poor  wretch,  was  never  frighted  so; 
He  thought  his  wings  were  much  too  slow, 

O'er  joyed  they  so  were  parted. 

He  next  upon  a  Glow-worm  light. 
You  must  suppose  it  now  was  night. 
Which,  for  her  hinder  part  was  bright. 

He  took  to  be  a  devil. 
And  furiously  doth  her  assail 
For  carrying  fire  in  her  tail ; 
He  thrashed  her  rough  coat  with  his  flail; 

The  mad  King  feared  no  evil. 

'Oh!'  quoth  the  Glow-worm,  'hold  thy  hand, 

Thou  puissant  King  of  Fairy-land! 

Thy  mighty  strokes  who  may  withstand? 

Hold,  or  of  life  despair  I ! ' 
Together  then  herself  doth  roll. 
And  tumbling  down  into  a  hole 
She  seemed  as  black  as  any  coal ; 

Which  vext  away  the  Fairy. 

From  thence  he  ran  into  a  hive: 
Amongst  the  bees  he  letteth  drive, 
And  down  their  combs  begins  to  rive, 
All  likely  to  have  spoiled, 


332  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Which  with  their  wax  his  face  besmeared, 
And  with  their  honey  daubed  his  beard: 
It  would  have  made  a  man  afeard 
To  see  how  he  was  moiled. 

A  new  adventure  him  betides : 

He  met  an  Ant,  which  he  bestrides, 

And  post  thereon  away  he  rides, 

^^'hich  with  his  haste  doth  tumble; 
And  came  full  over  on  her  snout, 
Her  heels  so  threw  the  dirt  about, 
For  she  by  no  means  could  get  out. 

But  over  him  doth  tumble. 

And  being  in  this  piteous  case, 
And  all  be-slurred  head  and  face, 
On  runs  he  in  this  wild-goose  chase. 

As  here  and  there  he  rambles  ; 
Half  blind,  against  a  molehill  hit. 
And  for  a  mountain  taking  it. 
For  all  he  was  out  of  his  wit 

Yet  to  the  top  he  scrambles. 

And  being  gotten  to  the  top, 

Yet  there  himself  he  could  not  stop, 

But  down  on  the  other  side  doth  chop. 

And  to  the  foot  came  rumbling; 
So  that  the  grubs,  therein  that  bred. 
Hearing  such  turmoil  over  head. 
Thought  surely  they  had  all  been  dead : 

So  fearful  was  the  jumbling. 

And  falling  down  into  a  lake, 
Which  him  up  to  the  neck  doth  take, 
His  fury  somewhat  it  doth  slake; 
He  calleth  for  a  ferry; 


MICHAEL    DRAYTON    CONSIDERED.  333 

"Where  you  may  some  recovery  note; 
What  was  his  club  he  made  his  boat, 
And  in  his  oaken  cup  doth  float, 
As  safe  as  in  a  wherry. 

Men  talk  of  the  adventures  strange 
Of  Don  Quixote,  and  of  their  change 
Through  which  he  armed  oft  did  range. 

Of  Sancho  Pancha's  travel ; 
But  should  a  man  tell  everything 
Done  by  this  frantic  Fairy  King, 
And  them  in  lofty  numbers  sing, 

It  well  his  wits  might  gravel." 

It  would  be  unfair  to  the  reader  to  omit  two  of  the 
dialogues  found  in  the  Muses'  Elysium.  They  are  extracted 
from  Chalmer's  "English  Poets,"  fourth  volume,  and  are 
called  Nymphals.  Drayton's  description  of  the  dialogues 
is  contained  in  the  first  four  lines  of  each. 

"  This  Nymphal  of  delights  doth  treat. 
Choice  beauties  and  proportions  neat. 
Of  curious  shapes  and  dainty  features, 
Describ'd  in  two  most  perfect  creatures." 

The  dialogue  is  conducted  by  Dorida  and  Rodope. 

"  D.  My  sweet,  my  sovereign  Rodope, 
My  dear  delight,  my  love, 
That  lock  of  hair  thou  sent'st  to  me, 
I  to  this  bracelet  wove; 
Which  brighter  every  day  doth  glow. 
The  longer  it  is  worn. 
As  its  delicious  fellows  do 
Thy  temples  that  adorn. 
R.  Nay,  had  I  thine,  my  Dorida, 
I  would  them  so  bestow 


^ 


334  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

As  that  the  wind  upon  my  way 

Might  backward  make  them  flow; 

So  should  it  in  its  chief  excess 

Turn  to  becalmed  air 

And  quite  forget  all  boisterousness 

To  play  with  every  hair. 
D.  To  me,  like  thine,  had  nature  given 

A  brow  so  arched,  so  clear, 

A  front  wherein  so  much  of  heaven 

Doth  to  each  eye  appear; 

The  world  should  see  I  would  strike  dead 

The  milky-way  that's  now. 

And  say  that  nectar  Hebe  shed 

Fell  all  upon  my  brow. 
R.  0,  had  I  eyes  like  Dorida's, 

I  would  enchant  the  day. 

And  make  the  sun  to  stand  at  gaze 

Till  he  forgot  his  way; 

And  cause  his  sister,  Queen  of  streams, 

When  so  I  list  by  night. 

By  her  much  blushing  at  my  beams 

To  eclipse  her  borrowed  light. 
Z).  Had  I  a  cheek  like  Rodope's, 

In  midst  of  which  doth  stand 

A  grove  of  roses,  such  as  these 

In  such  a  snowy  land, 

I  would  make  the  lily  which  we  now 

So  much  for  whiteness  name, 

As  drooping  down,  the  head  to  bow 

And  die  for  very  shame. 
R.  Had  I  a  bosom  like  to  thine, 

When  I,  it  pleased  to  show, 

Where  to  the  sky  I  would  incline, 

I'd  make  the  ethereal  bow. 

My  swannish  breast,  branch'd  all  with  blue. 

In  bravery  like  the  spring; 

In  winter  to  the  general  view 

Full  summer  forth  should  bring. 


MICHAEL    DRAYTON   CONSIDERED.  335 

D.  Had  I  a  body  like  my  dear, 

Were  I  so  straight,  so  tall, 

Or  if  so  broad  my  shoulders  were, 

Had  I  a  waist  so  small ; 

I  would  challenge  the  proud  Queen  of  Love 

To  yield  to  me  for  shape, 

And  I  should  fear  that  Mars  or  Jove 

Would  venture  for  my  rape. 
R.  Had  I  a  hand  like  thee,  my  girl, 

(This  hand,  0  let  me  kiss) 

These  ivory  arrows,  pil'd  with  pearl, 

Had  I  a  hand  like  this; 

I  would  not  doubt  at  all  to  make 

Each  finger  of  my  hand 

To  task,  swift  Mercury  to  take 

With  his  enchanting  wand. 
D.  Had  I  a  thigh  like  Rodope's 

Which  'twas  my  chance  to  view 

When,  lying  on  yon  bank  of  ease 

The  wind  thy  skirt  up  blew; 

I  would  say  it  were  a  column  wrought 

To  some  intent  divine, 

And  for  our  chaste  Diana  sought 

A  pillar  for  her  shrine. 
R.  Had  I  a  leg  but  like  to  thine, 

That  were  so  neat,  so  clean, 

A  swelling  calf  so  small,  so  fine, 

An  ankle  round  and  lean, 

I'd  say  to  nature  she  doth  miss 

Her  old  skill,  and  maintain 

She  showed  her  masterpiece  in  this. 

Not  to  be  done  again. 
D.  Had  I  that  foot  hid  in  those  shoes, 

Proportioned  to  my  height, 

Short  heels,  thin  instep,  even  toes, 

A  sole  so  wondrous  straight. 

The  foresters  and  nymphs  at  this 

Amazed  all  should  stand, 


336  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

And  kneeling  down,  should  meekly  kiss 
The  prints  left  in  the  sand." 

The  next  dialogue  is  conducted  by  Mertilla,  Claia,  and 
Cloris,  and  the  subject  is  set  out  in  the  first  four  lines,  as 
follows : 

"  A  nymph  is  married  to  a  fay. 
Great  preparations  for  the  day. 
All  rites  of  nuptials,  they  recite  you 
To  the  bridal,  and  invite  you. 

M.  But  will  our  Tita  wed  this  fay? 
Cla.  Yea,  and  to-morrow  is  the  day. 
M.   But  why  should  she  bestow  herself 

Upon  this  dwarfish  fairy  elf? 
Cla.  Why,  by  her  smallness,  you  may  find 

That  she  is  of  the  fairy  kind. 

And  therefore  apt  to  choose  her  mate 

Where  she  did  her  beginning  take ; 

Besides  he's  deft  and  wondrous  airy 

And  of  the  noblest  of  the  fairy. 

Chief  of  the  Crickets  of  much  fame 

In  fairy,  a  most  ancient  name ; 

But  to  be  brief,  'tis  cleanly  done. 

The  pretty  wench  is  wooed  and  won. 
Clo.  If  this  be  so,  let  us  provide 

The  ornaments  to  fit  our  bride; 

For  they,  knowing  she  doth  come 

From  us,  in  Elysium, 

Queen  Mab  will  look  she  should  be  drest 

In  those  attires  we  think  our  best; 

Therefore  some  curious  things  let's  give  her, 

Ere  to  her  spouse,  we  her  deliver. 
M.  I'll  have  a  jewel  for  her  ear 

Which,  for  my  sake,  I'll  have  her  wear; 

'Twill  be  a  dewdrop  and  therein 

Of  Cupids  I  will  have  a  twin 


MICHAEL    DRAYTON    CONSIDERED.  337 

Which,  strugghiig  with  their  wings  shall  break 

The  bubble,  out  of  which  shall  leak 

So  sweet  a  Uquor  as  shall  move 

Each  thing  that  smells,  to  be  in  love. 
Cla.  Believe  me,  girl,  this  will  be  fine. 

And  to  this  pendant,  then  take  mine, 

A  cup  in  fashion  of  a  fly 

Of  the  lynx's  piercing  eye 

^^^lerein  there  sticks  a  sunny  ray 

Shot  in,  through  the  clearest  day, 

\Vliose  brightness  Venus'  self  did  move 

Therein  to  put  her  drink  of  love, 

\\liich  for  more  strength  she  did  distil. 

The  limbeck  was  a  phoenix  quill; 

At  this  cup's  delicious  brink, 

A  fly  approaching  but  to  drink, 

Like  amber  or  some  precious  gum 

It  transparent  doth  become. 
CIo.  For  jewels  for  her  ears  she's  sped : 

But  for  a  dressing  for  her  head, 

I  think  for  her  I  have  a  tire 

That  all  fairies  shall  admire; 

The  yellow^s  in  the  full  blowm  rose, 

AA^iich  in  the  top,  it  doth  enclose. 

Like  drops  of  gold,  one  shall  be  hung 

L^pon  her  tresses,  and  among 

Those  scattered  seeds  (the  eye  to  please) 

The  wings  of  the  cantharides. 

Linked  with  the  rainbow  that  doth  rail 

Those  moons  in,  in  the  peacock's  tail ; 

Whose  dainty  colors,  being  mixed 

With  the  other  beauties,  and  so  fixed 

Her  lovely  tresses  shall  appear 

As  though  upon  a  flame  they  were ; 

And  to  be  sure  she  shall  be  gay 

We'll  take  those  feathers  from  the  jay 

About  her  eyes  in  circlets  set, 

To  be  our  Tita's  coronet. 


338  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

M.  Then,  dainty  girls,  I  make  no  doubt, 
But  we  shall  neatly  send  her  out; 
But  let's  among  ourselves  agree 
Of  what  her  wedding  gown  shall  be. 

Cla.  Of  pansy,  pink  and  primrose  leaves, 
Most  curiously  laid  on  in  threaves; 
And  all  embroidery  to  supply. 
Powdered  with  flowers  of  rosemary; 
A  trail  about  the  skirt  shall  run 
The  silkworm's  finest,  newly  spun. 
And  every  seam,  the  nymphs  shall  sew 
With  smallest  of  the  spinners'  clue. 
And  having  done  their  work,  again 
These  to  the  church,  shall  bear  her  train, 
Which  for  our  Tita  we  will  make 
Of  the  cast  slough  of  a  snake, 
Wliich,  quivering  as  the  wind  doth  blow, 
The  sun  shall  it,  like  tinsel  show. 

Clo.  And  being  led  to  meet  her  mate, 

To  make  sure  that  she  want  no  state, 

Moons  from  the  peacock's  tail,  we'll  shred 

With  feathers  from  the  pheasant's  head. 

Mixed  with  the  plume  of  so  high  price, 

The  precious  bird  of  paradise; 

Which  to  make  up,  our  nymphs  shall  ply 

Into  a  curious  canopy. 

Borne  o'er  her  head  (by  our  inquiry) 

By  elfs,  the  fittest  of  the  fairy. 

M.  But  all  this  while,  we  have  forgot 
The  buskins,  neighbors,  have  we  not? 

Cla.  We  had;  for  those,  I'll  fit  her  now. 
They  shall  be  of  the  lady-cow. 
The  dainty  shell  upon  her  back 
Of  crimson,  strewed  with  spots  of  black; 
Which,  as  she  holds  a  stately  pace, 
Her  leg  will  wonderfully  grace. 

Clo.  But  then  for  music  of  the  best, 

This  must  be  thought  on  for  the  feast. 


MICHAEL    DRAYTON    CONSIDERED,  339 

M.  The  nightingale,  of  birds  most  choice, 

To  do  her  best,  shall  strain  her  voice ; 

And  to  this  bird,  to  make  a  set, 

The  Mavis,  Merle  and  Robinet; 

The  Lark,  the  Linnet  and  the  Thrush, 

That  make  a  choir  of  every  bush. 

But  for  still  music,  we  will  keep 

The  Wren  and  Titmouse,  which  to  sleep 

Shall  sing  the  bride,  when  she's  alone, 

The  rest  into  their  chambers  gone. 

And  like  those  upon  ropes  that  walk 

On  gossamer  from  stalk  to  stalk, 

The  tripping  fairies,  tricks  shall  play, 

The  evening  of  her  wedding  day. 
Cla.  But  for  the  bride  bed,  what  were  fit? 

That  hath  not  been  talked  of  yet. 
Clo.  Of  leaves  of  roses,  white  and  red, 

Shall  be  the  covering  of  her  bed; 

The  curtains,  valance,  testers,  all 

Shall  be  the  flower  imperial; 

And  for  the  fringe,  it  all  along 

With  azure  harebells  shall  be  hung; 

Of  lilies  shall  the  pillows  be, 

With  down  stripped  off  the  butterfly. 

Come,  bright  girls,  come  all  together 

And  bring  all  your  offerings  hither. 

You  must  have  a  buxom  bevy : 

All  your  goodly  graces  levy. 

Come  in  majesty  and  state 

Our  bridal  here  to  celebrate.  -^ 

Summon  all  the  sweets  that  are 

To  this  nuptial  to  repair. 

Till  with  throngs,  themselves  they  smother. 

Strongly  stifling  one  another. 

And  at  last  they  all  consume 

And  vanish  in  one  rich  perfume. 

With  tapers  let  the  temple  shine; 

Sing  to  Hymen  hymns  divine; 


340  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Load  the  altars  till  there  rise 

Clouds  from  the  burnt  sacrifice. 

With  your  censers,  swing  aloof 

Their  smells  till  they  ascend  the  roof. 

Violins,  strike  up  aloud; 

Ply  the  gittern,  scour  the  crowd; 

Let  the  nimble  hand  belabor 

The  whistling  pipe  and  drumbling  tabor. 

To  the  full,  the  bagpipe  rack, 

Till  the  swelling  leather  crack. 

The  Gods,  this  feast  as  to  begin, 

Have  sent  of  their  ambrosia  in. 

Then  serve  we  up  the  straw's  rich  berry, 

The  respas  and  Elysium  cherry. 

The  virgin  berry,  from  the  flowers. 

In  Hybla  wrought  in  Flora's  bowers. 

Full  bowls  of  nectar,  and  no  girl 

Carouse  but  in  dissolved  pearl; 

For  our  Tita  is  this  day 

Married  to  a  noble  fay." 

The  laudations  of  Drayton  as  a  poet  were  many  and 
deserving.  The  eulogium  of  Robert  Tofte,  the  translator 
of  Ariosto's  "Satires,"  has  been  heretofore  cited. 

William  Browne,  one  of  England's  greatest  poets,  and 
a  contemporary,  after  eulogizing  Sidney  and  Spenser, 
thus  speaks  of  Drayton: 

"  Drayton,  among  the  worthiest  of  all  those. 
The  glorious  laurel  or  the  Cyprian  rose 
Have  ever  crowned,  doth  claim  in  every  line 
An  equal  honor  from  the  sacred  Nine: 
For  if  old  time  could,  like  the  restless  main, 
Roll  himself  back  into  his  spring  again. 
And  on  his  wings  bear  this  admired  Muse, 
For  Ovid,  Virgil,  Homer  to  peruse ; 
They  would  confess  that  never  happier  pen 
Sung  of  his  love,  his  country  and  the  men." 


MICHAEL    DRAYTON    CONSIDERED.  341 

Writing  of  the  Polyolbion,  a  work  of  great  labor  and 
infinite  study,  which  associated  Drayton's  name  with  the 
rivers,  forests,  hills,  mountains,  and  valleys  of  England, 
George  Wither,  a  contemporary  poet,  says : 

"  And  some  unborn  will  say, 
(I  speak  the  truth,  whate'er  men  think  to-day), 
Ages  to  come,  shall  hug  thy  poesy, 
As  we,  our  dear  friends'  pictures,  when  they  die." 

Ben  Jonson,  in  what  he  calls  his  '  'Vision  on  the  Muses 
of  his  friend,  Michael  Drayton,"  when  he  adverts  to  his 
"Battle  of  Agincourt,"  says: 

''  There  thou  art  Homer ;  pray  thee  use  the  style 
Thou  hast  deserved,  and  let  me  read  the  while 
Thy  catalogue  of  ships,  exceeding  his, 
Thy  list  of  aids  and  forces,  so  it  is 
The  poet's  act;  and  for  his  country's  sake, 
Brave  are  the  musters  that  the  Muse  will  make; 
And  when  he  ships  them,  where  to  use  their  arms, 
How  do  his  trumpets  breathe!  AVhat  loud  alarms! 
Look  how  we  read  the  Spartans  were  inflamed 
With  bold  Tyrsetus'  verse ;  when  thou  art  named, 
So  shall  our  English  youth  urge  on  and  cry 
An  Agincourt!-  an  Agincourt!  or  die." 

Doubtless  I  have  already  satisfied  the  reader  that  I 
had  good  cause  to  select  Drayton  as  one  of  the  three  poets 
who  were  worthy  to  be  called  and  known  as  Shakespeare; 
and  as  I  will  hereafter  show  that  he  had  "a  main  finger" 
(to  use  Heywood's  expression)  in  the  making  of  some, 
at  least,  of  the  Shakespeare  plays,  it  is  proper  that  I  should 
summarize  the  additional  reasons  for  exalting  Drayton 
to  so  high  and  honorable  a  position. 


342  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Drayton  was  not  merely  a  scholar,  a  wit  and  a  good 
poet,  but  he  was  thoroughly  versed  in  English  history; 
and  the  historical  plays  are  in  line  with  the  events  described 
in  his  historical  poems.  He  himself  in  his  rhyming  epistle 
to  Sandys,  Treasurer  for  the  Virginia  Colony,  says, 

"  It  was  my  hap  before  all  other  men 
To  suffer  shipwreck  by  my  forward  pen, 
"WTien  King  James  entered,  at  which  joyful  time 
I  taught  his  title  to  this  isle  in  rh}mie 
And  to  my  part  did  all  the  Muses  win. 
With  high-pitch  pseans  to  applaud  him  in." 

It  could  not  have  been  on  account  of  his  gratulatory 
poem  to  King  James  that  the  new  sovereign  flouted  him. 
A  man,  superior  in  station,  is  not  apt  to  treat  with  con- 
tempt another  who  eulogizes  him,  especially  in  well-written 
poetry.  A  much  more  plausible  and  satisfactory  reason 
could  be  found  in  the  fact  that  James  must  have  known 
or  suspected  that  Drayton  was  one  of  the  wTiters  of  the 
play  of  Richard  the  Second,  which  figures  so  largely  in 
the  examination  of  the  deluded  followers  of  Essex,  for 
that  play  treated  of  the  deposing  of  a  king.  That  Drayton 
was  one  of  the  collaborators  in  the  composition  of  that 
play,  I  think  that  I  shall  be  able  to  show. 

There  are  two  other  circumstances  heretofore  alluded 
to,  which  had  to  be  weighed  in  the  consideration  of  Dray- 
ton's claims.  The  reader  will  remember  that  Heywood, 
in  giving  nicknames  to  his  contemporary  poets,  including 
Shake-speare,  leaves  out  the  name  of  Drayton;  and 
Webster,  in  praising  the  industrious  Shakespeare  and 
others,  also  omits  Drayton.  Some  of  these  poets  were 
identified  by  special  names.     Thus  Marston  was  called 


MICHAEL  DRAYTON   CONSIDERED.  343 

"Kinsayder,"  Monday  was  knowTi  as  ''Lazarus  Plot,"  and 
Drayton  was  ''the  Gentle  Shepherd  or  Rowland,"  and 
Davies  styled  him  the  "poet  Decius." 

Another  remarkable  circumstance  in  connection  with 
the  Shakespeare  question  is  the  fact  that  after  the  poem 
of  Tarquin  and  Lucrece  appeared  in  1593,  Drayton,  in 
1594,  published  his  poem  of  Matilda,  the  seventh  stanza  of 
which  reads  as  follows : 

"  Lucrece,  of  whom  proud  Rome  hath  boasted  long, 
Lately  revived  to  live  another  age, 
And  here  arrived  to  tell  of  Tarquin's  wrong, 
Her  chaste  denial  and  the  tyrant's  rage. 
Acting  her  passions  on  our  stately  stage ; 
She  is  remembered,  all  forgetting  me. 
Yet  I  as  fair  and  chaste  as  e'er  was  she." 

In  all  succeeding  editions  of  the  poem,  Drayton  omitted 
this  stanza.  As  Collier  says  in  his  introduction  to  the 
poem  of  Lucrece,  "the  stanza  above  quoted  contains  a 
clear  allusion  to  Shakespeare's  Lucrece,  and  a  question 
then  presents  itself,  why  Drayton  entirely  omitted  it  in 
the  after  impressions  of  his  Matilda." 

There  is  another  singular  circumstance  in  connection 
with  the  poem  of  Lucrece.  In  1624,  eight  years  after  the 
death  of  William  Shaksper,  an  edition  of  Lucrece  was 
published  which  purported  to  be  newly  revised  and  which 
was  accompanied  also  by  marginal  explanatory  notes. 

Naturally,  only  the  author  of  the  poem  would  take  so 
much  trouble  as  appears  to  have  been  taken  as  to  this 
edition  of  Lucrece,  and  no  dramatic  poet  of  the  time 
indulged  in  marginal  notes,  as  the  reader  will  find,  except 
Michael  Drayton.  His  habit  in  respect  to  revision  will  be 
hereafter  considered  in  connection  with  the  plays. 


344  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Again,  the  reader  of  lines  400  to  413  of  Lucrece,  who 
compares  them  with  the  57th  and  58th  stanzas  of  the 
sixth  canto  of  Drayton's  Barons'  Wars,  will  be  struck 
with  the  wonderful  resemblance.  For  the  benefit  of  the 
casual  reader,  I  will  place  them  in  regular  order  one  after 
the  other. 

LUCRECE,    LINES   400   TO    406. 

"  Her  hair,  like  golden  threads,  play'd  with  her  breath 
0  modest  wantons!     Wanton  modesty' 
Showing  life's  triumph  in  the  map  of  death, 
And  death's  dim  look  in  life's  mortality ; 
Each  in  her  sleep  themselves  so  beautify. 
As  if  between  them  twain,  there  were  no  strife. 
But  that  life  lived  in  death,  and  death  in  life." 

Drayton's  barons'  wars,  57. 

"  Her  loose  hair  look'd  like  gold,  (a  word  too  base 
Nay  more  than  sin,  but  so  to  name  her  hair) 
Declining  as  to  kiss  her  fairer  face. 
No  word  is  fair  enough  for  thing  so  fair. 
Nor  ever  was  there  epithet  could  grace 
That  by  much  praising,  which  we  much  impair, 
And  where  the  pen  fails,  pencils  can  not  show  it." 

LUCRECE,    LINES   407   TO   413. 

*'  Her  breasts  like  ivory  globes,  arched  with  blue 
A  pair  of  maiden  worlds  unconquered. 
Save  of  their  lord,  no  bearing  yoke  they  knew, 
And  him  by  oath  they  truly  honored, 
These  worlds  to  Tarquin,  new  ambition  bred. 
Who,  like  a  foul  usurper,  went  about 
From  this  fair  throne  to  heave  the  owner  out." 


MICHAEL    DRAYTOX    CONSIDERED.  345 

DRAYTOX'S    BAROXS'    WARS,    56. 

"  Where  her  fair  breasts  at  hberty  were  let, 
Whose  violet  veins  in  branched  riverets  flow, 
And  Venus'  swans  and  milky  doves  were  set 
Upon  those  swelling  mounts  of  driven  snow; 
^\Tiereon  while  Love  to  sport  himself  doth  get, 
He  lost  his  way,  nor  back  again  could  go. 
But  with  those  banks  of  beauty  set  about. 
He  wandered  still,  yet  never  could  get  out." 

It  must  be  considered  also  that  Draj^ton  was  a  thorough 
scholar,  a  master  and  maker  of  words,  a  man  familiar  with 
the  Court,  with  the  most  distinguished  and  learned  men 
of  his  time,  with  all  the  customs  and  habits  of  the  people, 
with  the  idioms  of  Warwickshire,  with  Gloucestershire 
where,  at  Clifford,  he  sojourned  in  the  summer  months, 
with  the  plants  and  flowers,  the  hills,  the  mountains,  and 
the  rivers  of  the  British  Isles.  Hunter  says,  "I  see  not 
why  Drayton  should  not  now  be  placed,  as  he  was  by  his 
contemporaries,  in  the  first  class  of  English  poets."  Speak- 
ing of  the  Polyolbion,  D'Israeli  said  in  the  "  Amenities  of 
Literature,"  "  The  grand  theme  of  this  poet  was  his  father- 
land. The  Muse  of  Drayton  passes  by  every  town  and 
tower;  each  tells  some  tale  of  ancient  glory  or  of  some 
worthy  who  must  never  die.  The  local  associations  of 
legends  and  customs  are  animated  by  the  personifications 
of  mountains  and  rivers;  and  often,  in  some  favorite 
scenery,  he  breaks  forth  with  all  the  emotion  of  a  true 
poet.  He  has  not,  says  Lamb,  left  a  rivulet  so  narrow 
that  it  may  be  stepped  over  without  honorable  mention, 
and  has  associated  hills  and  streams  with  life  and  passions 
beyond  the  dreams  of  old  mythology." 


346  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

I  have  not  been  able  to  tell  the  reader  who  were  Dray- 
ton's parents,  or  whether  he  was  married  or  single,  al- 
though I  believe  that  a  search  would  show  that  he  was 
married,  probably  in  Dublin,  to  Mary  Martin ;  nor  whether 
he  made  a  will  or  not.  It  appears  that  in  the  latter  part 
of  his  life,  he  lodged  in  London  at  the  Bay  Window  house 
next  to  the  east  end  of  St.  Dunstan's  Church  in  Fleet 
Street;  and  that  he  died  there  on  December  23,  1631. 

"The  only  manuscript  in  the  British  Museum,  on 
Drayton,  is  number  24,491,  Hunter's  Chorus  vatuum.  It 
refers  to  a  poetical  brochure  entitled  'Parthea,  a  funeral 
pyramid  to  the  honor  of  the  very  virtuous  gentlewoman 
(now  in  glory),  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Gray,  daughter  of  Richard 
Gray,  Esquire,  and  sometime  wife  of  J.  M.  Martin,  of 
Cork,  by  his  sister  Mrs.  Mary  Drayton,  allied  to  the  prince 
of  English  poets,  Michael  Drayton,  Esquire,  interred  at 
Atherstone,  de  anno  1614,  aetat  24.'  " 

In  the  ably  conducted  debate  between  Appleton 
Morgan  and  Isaac  H.  Piatt,  reported  in  New  Shakespeare- 
ana  for  April  and  July,  1903,  Mr.  Morgan  calls  attention 
to  the  fact  that  the  plays  are  packed  with  Warwickshire- 
isms  and  that  the  Warwickshire  dialect  could  not  have 
been  placed  in  the  plays  with  a  design  of  promoting  their 
popularity  or  success.  Mr.  Morgan  collected  four  hundred 
and  eighty-eight  of  these  isms.  And  as  to  names,  he  has 
found  a  frequent  use  of  Warwickshire  names.  For  instance 
in  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew  will  be  found  such  Warwick- 
shire names  as  Sly,  William  Visor,  Peter  Turf,  Henry 
Pimpernell,  Marion  Hackett,  Wincot,  old  John  Naps  of 
Greece,  and  many  others.  He  also  calls  attention  to  the 
fact  that  the  plays  are  packed  with  puns,  of  which  the 
significance  depends  upon  a  Warwickshire  pronunciation 


MICHAEL    DRAYTON    CONSIDERED.  347 

of  the  vowels,  instancing  the  pun  as  to  "  ship"  and  " sheep," 
in  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  Act  1,  Scene  1,  line  73. 

In  forming  an  opinion,  therefore,  as  to  whether  or  not 
Michael  Drayton  was  one  of  the  composers  of  part  or  all 
of  the  Shakespeare  plays,  the  reader  must  keep  in  mind 
the  fact  that  Drayton  was  born,  educated,  and  trained  in 
Warwickshire. 

A  complete  edition  of  Drayton's  works  would  be  very 
acceptable  to  the  lovers  of  good  English  literature.  Such 
an  edition  was  projected  by  the  Rev.  Richard  Hooper, 
and  three  volumes  appeared  in  1886,  under  the  alluring 
but  deceptive  title  of  "The  complete  works  of  Michael 
Drayton."  These  volumes,  however,  contained  only  the 
poems  of  Polyolbion  and  the  Harmony  of  the  Church, 
omitting  his  best  poems;  and  the  publication  then  stopped, 
probably  because  of  the  death  of  the  accomplished  editor; 
and  there  is  no  good  edition  of  his  con.plete  works. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

WHAT   THE    DEDICATIONS    SHOW. 

"By  indirections  find  directions  out." 

-  Hamlet,  ii,  1. 

The  prose  writings  connected  with  the  Shakespeare 
plays  and  poems  may  be  properly  divided  into  three  classes 
or  parts.  One  part  consists  of  the  letters  scattered  at 
intervals  throughout  the  plays.  Another  consists  of  the 
dedications  of  the  two  poems;  and  the  third  consists  of 
the  argument  which  precedes  the  poem  of  Tarquin  and 
Lucrece.  It  is  not  my  purpose,  neither  is  it  necessary, 
to  dissect  or  specially  consider  either  the  letters  or  the 
argument,  because,  if  the  plays  were  composed  by  col- 
laborators, or,  if  after  they  or  any  of  them  were  com- 
pleted, they  were  revised,  altered,  or  dressed  by  another 
than  the  original  composer,  any  argument  in  favor  of  a 
particular  authorship  based  upon  them  would  be  regarded 
as  unreliable,  or  at  the  least,  disputable. 

The  argument  preceding  the  poem  of  Tarquin  and 
Lucrece  is  very  like  to  that  which  precedes  Ben  Jonson's 
Sejanus,  as  the  reader  will  find  on  examination.  I  have 
carefully  compared  them  and  believe  that  Jonson  was  the 
composer  of  both  arguments. 

In  a  lesser  degree,  the  objection  of  unreliability  applies 
to  the  two  decUcations,  but  not  for  the  same  reason.  I 
wish  to  be  entirely  frank  with  the  reader.  No  matter 
how  strong  an  argument  in  favor  of  any  particular  writer 
may  be  drawn  from  the  dedications,  it  can  be  objected 
with  some  show  of  truth  that  both   of    the  dedications 


WHAT   THE    DEDICATIONS    SHOW.  349 

might  have  been  composed  and  furnished  by  the  pub- 
Hshers.  Every  student  of  Enghsh  literature  knows  that 
pubHshers  took  great  Hberties  with  unclaimed  productions 
during  the  Elizabethan  era.  Printers  and  publishers 
then,  unlike  those  of  the  present  day,  were  despots.  They 
assigned  the  authorship  of  a  work  to  any  man  they  pleased 
and  they  dedicated  it  to  whom  they  pleased.  Not  only 
that,  but  they  did  what  they  deemed  best  for  their  own 
interests  with  a  manuscript,  abridging  or  enlarging  it  to 
suit  themselves.  Nash,  the  satirist  and  dramatist,  says 
that  the  printers  added  four  acts  to  his  play,  "The  Isle 
of  Dogs,"  without  his  consent  or  the  least  guess  of  his 
drift  or  scope.  Bacon,  in  his  dedication  of  his  Essays  to 
his  brother  Anthony,  touches  upon  the  same  despotic 
custom  when  he  says,  "These  fragments  of  my  conceits 
were  going  to  print;  to  labor  the  stay  of  them  had  been 
troublesome  and  subject  to  interpretation;  to  let  them 
pass  had  been  to  adventure  the  wrong  they  might  receive 
by  untrue  copies,  or  by  some  garnishment  which  it  might 
please  any  that  should  set  them  forth  to  bestow  upon 
them." 

Wither,  in  his  "Scholar's  Purgatory,"  1625,  says  of  pub- 
lishers, "If  he  gets  any  written  matter  in  his  power  likely 
to  be  vendible,  whether  the  author  be  willing  or  not,  he 
will  publish  it,  and  it  shall  be  contrived  and  named  also 
according."  Besides,  the  mere  fact  of  a  similarity  in  the 
phraseology  as  between  one  or  both  of  the  dedications 
and  a  prior  dedication  to  the  play  of  another  man,  would 
strengthen  the  doubt.  As  for  instance,  in  the  dedication 
of  the  play  of  Cornelia,  presumably  written  by  Thomas 
Kyd,  are  these  words,  "  But  chiefly  that  I  would  attempt 
the  dedication  of  so  rough  un-polished  a  work  to  the  ^ivrmy 


350  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

of  your  so  worthy  self.  .  .  .  And  never  spend  one  hour  of 
the  day  in  some  kind  service  to  your  honor  and  another 
of  the  night  in  wishing  you  all  happiness." 

Again,  in  the  dedication  of  Whitney's  "Choice  of 
Emblems,"  published  in  1586,  occurs  also  the  following 
striking  resemblance  to  the  later  Venus  and  Adonis  dedi- 
cation: "Being  abashed  that  my  ability  can  not  afford 
them  such  as  are  fit  to  be  offered  up  to  so  honorable  a 
survey;  yet  if  it  shall  like  your  honor  to  allow  of  any  of 
them,  I  shall  think  my  pen  set  to  the  book  in  happy 
hour,  and  it  shall  encourage  me  to  assay  some  matter  of 
more  moment  as  soon  as  leisure  will  furnish  my  desire  in 
that  behalf." 

In  considering  therefore  what  my  researches  show  as 
to  the  two  dedications,  the  reader  will  understand  that 
the  argument  from  the  dedications  can  not  be  a  very 
convincing  one. 

Dedications  in  the  time  of  Elizabeth  and  James,  which 
emanated  from  the  authors,  may  be  classified  thus :  There 
were  those  which  were  intended  to  obtain  the  patronage 
of  some  distinguished  man  or  some  friend  of  literature. 
There  were  those  also  which  were  intended  as  courteous 
acts  to  those  who  had  befriended,  or  were  relatives  of, 
the  writer.  And  then,  again,  there  were  those  which 
were  carelessly  made  without  regard  for  or  reference  to 
anybody. 

An  examination  of  the  dedications  written  by  Michael 
Drayton  shows  that  they  were  mainly  of  the  first  class. 
He  dedicated  his  compositions  to  Aston  or  Goodere,  or  to 
those  of  the  nobility  who  could  help  him  or  had  helped  him 
as  patrons.  Bacon's  dedications  belonged  to  both  the 
first  and  second  class,  but  they  were  made  chiefly  to  his 


WHAT   THE    DEDICATIONS   SHOW.  351 

friends  and  kinsmen;  while  Dekker's  dedications  are 
found  in  the  first  and  third  class.  Naturally,  if  Drayton 
had  written  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  as  the  first  heir  of  his 
invention,  and  had  caused  it  to  be  published,  he  would 
have  dedicated  the  poem  to  Sir  Henry  Goodere  or  Sir 
Walter  Aston,  for  they  were  his  sincere  friends  and  patrons. 
I  have  examined  the  dedications  made  by  Drayton  and  I 
can  not  find  in  them  any  particular  resemblance  to  the 
dedications  of  the  two  poems.  In  trying  Bacon,  I  find 
some  resemblances. 

In  the  Venus  and  Adonis  dedication,  the  writer  says: 
"I  account  myself  highly  praised,"  while  Bacon,  in  a 
letter  to  the  Lord  Treasurer,  Vol.  6,  Edition  1803,  page 
385,  says,  "I  account  myself  much  bound." 

In  the  Tarquin  and  Lucrece  dedication,  the  T\Titer 
says,  "The  warrant  I  have  of  your  honorable  disposition," 
while  Bacon,  in  a  letter  to  Lord-Keeper  Egerton,  Vol.  6, 
page  32,  says,  "of  your  Lordship's  honorable  disposition, 
both  generally  and  to  me."  In  the  same  dedication 
occur  the  words,  "  Being  part  in  all  I  have  devoted  yours," 
while  in  the  dedication  to  Henry  the  Seventh,  Vol.  5, 
page  4,  Bacon  says,  "In  part  of  my  acknowledgment  to 
your  Highness." 

In  the  ending  of  the  Venus  and  Adonis  dedication, 
the  writer  says,  "which  I  wish  may  always  answer  your 
own  wish,"  and  in  that  of  the  Tarquin  and  Lucrece,  he 
says,  "To  whom  I  wish  long  life,  still  lengthened  with  all 
happiness. 

Your  Lordship's  in  all  duty." 

Bacon,  in  a  letter  to  Essex,  Vol.  6,  page  8,  says, 

"  I  wish  you  all  honor, 

Your  Lordship's  in  most  faithful  duty." 


352  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

And  at  page  13  he  says,  "  And  so  I  wish  you  all  increase 
of  honor.  Your  honor's  poor  kinsman  in  faithful  service 
and  duty." 

And  again,  Vol.  5,  page  220,  he  says  in  a  letter  to 
Burghley,  "I  wi."h  your  Lordship  all  happiness,"  and  at 
page  270,  in  a  letter  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  he 
says,  "And  so  I  wish  your  Grace  all  prosperity."  Idem,, 
pages  272  and  278,  304  and  325. 

If  Bacon  wrote  the  two  dedications,  he  had  in  mind 
his  relation  to  the  Earl  of  Southampton,  who  was  Bacon's 
friend,  and  on  whom  also  Bacon  in  return  conferred  many 
favors.  As  an  evidence  of  this  continuing  friendship. 
Bacon  wrote  to  him.  Vol.  5,  page  281,  referring  to  the 
accession  of  James,  "it  is  as  true  as  a  thing  that  God 
knoweth,  that  this  great  change  hath  wrought  in  me  no 
other  change  towards  your  Lordship  than  this,  that  I 
may  safely  be  to  you  now,  which  I  was  truly  before. "^ 

In  the  dedication  of  his  translation  of  the  Psalms, 
made  while  he  was  on  a  sick-bed,  he  said  to  Herbert,  the 
dedicatee,  "it  being  my  manner  for  dedications  to  choose 
those  that  I  hold  most  fit  for  the  argument." 

I  can  find  nothing  in  the  dedications  written  by  Dekker 
at  all  resembling  the  two  dedications  now  under  con- 
sideration, but  he  throws  light  upon  the  habit  of  the 
writers  of  that  period  as  to  dedications  when,  in  the  dedi- 
cation to  "News  from  Hell,"  written  in  1606,  speaking  of 
patrons,  he  says,  "The  strongest  shields  that  I  know  for 
such  fights  (against  the  reception  of  a  book)  are  good 
patrons;  from  whom  writers  claim  such  ancient  privileges 
that  howsoever  they  find  entertainment,  they  make  bold 
to  make  acquaintance  with  them  (though  never  so  merely 
strangers)  without  blushing." 


WHAT   THE    DEDICATIONS    SHOW.  353 

Dekker  dedicated  his  Satiro-mastix  to  the  World, 
beginning  thus :  ''  World,  I  was  once  resolved  to  be  round 
with  thee,  because  I  know  'tis  thy  fashion  to  be  round 
with  everybody;  but  the  wind  shifting  his  point,  the  vane 
turned;  yet  because  thou  wilt  sit  as  Judge  of  all  matters 
(though  for  thy  labor  thou  wearest  Midas'  ears  and  art 
monstrum  horrendum,  informe  inyens  cui  lumen  adempticm., 
v/hose  great  Polyphemean  eye  is  put  out)  I  care  not  much 
if  I  make  description  before  thy  universality  of  that  terri- 
ble Poetamachia  commenced  between  Horace,  the  Second, 
and  a  band  of  lean-witted  poetasters."  When  he  wrote 
the  Pleasant  Comedy  of  the  Gentle  Craft,  he  dedicated 
it  to  "all  good  fellows,  professors  of  the  gentle  craft;  of 
what  degree  soever." 

After  examining  all  the  dedications  of  his  books  and 
plays,  I  find  no  resemblance  in  the  style  or  words  to  those 
which  precede  the  two  poems. 

Tracing  by  the  dedications,  therefore,  is  not  a  fair 
or  very  convincing  test.  There  is,  however,  in  the  study 
and  examination  of  the  dedications  to  the  two  poems, 
one  fact  which  is  worthy  of  consideration.  It  will  be 
noticed  by  the  reader  that  the  signatures  to  the  dedica- 
tions are  thus  spelled:  "William  Shakespeare."  I  give 
as  my  authority  for  this  statement  the  "Outlines"  of 
Halliwell-Phillips. 

If,  now,  the  reader  will  turn  back  to  Chapter  VIII, 
he  will  find  that  Sir  Frederic  Madden,  who  examined  the 
original  will  of  the  man  of  Stratford,  insists  that  he  wrote 
his  name  thus  "Shakspere."  Chalmers  and  Drake,  who 
were  believers  in  Shaksper's  authorship  of  the  plays  and 
whom  Madden  antagonized  on  this  point,  claimed  that  he 
wrote  his  surname  thus,  "  Shakspeare,"  while  I  contend 


354  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

that  an  examination  carefully  made  of  the  facsimiles 
shows  that  William  of  Stratford  wrote  his  name  thus, 
"  Shaksper."  Now,  whether  he  wrote  his  own  name  as 
Shakspere,  Shakspeare,  or  Shaksper,  he  did  not  write  his 
name  as  "Shakespeare"  when  he  signed  the  mortgage, 
deed,  and  will,  as  the  dedicator  of  the  two  poems  did. 

Of  course  it  is  easy  to  suggest  that  the  discrepancy 
might  have  been  caused  by  a  blunder  of  the  printer;  but 
a  young  writer  who  was  putting  out  a  poem  as  the  first 
heir  of  his  invention  and  dedicating  it  to  a  powerful  noble- 
man whose  patronage  and  favor  might  be  of  great  value 
to  him,  would  very  naturally  take  care  that  his  name 
should  be  spelled  properly.  He  might  be  careless  as  to 
printers'  mistakes  in  the  body  of  the  poem,  but  he  would 
not  suffer  his  surname  to  be  incorrectly  printed  at  the 
end  of  the  dedication,  if  he  were  the  real  author  of  the 
dedicated  work.  And  if  the  printer  made  a  mistake  as 
to  the  name  of  the  dedicator  of  the  Venus  and  Adonis, 
it  would  be  natural  that  the  composer  would  correct  the 
mistake  in  the  succeeding  dedication  of  the  Tarquin  and 
Lucrece.  He  would  desire  to  be  made  famous  in  the 
literary  world  in  his  own  name.  While  a  writer  might 
wish  to  conceal  his  name  by  the  use  of  a  pseudonym,  he 
would  not  use  a  pseudonym  so  like  his  own  in  spelling 
and  pronunciation  as  Shakespeare  is  to  Shakspeare, 
Shakspere,  or  Shaksper. 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

WHITHER  THE    PATHWAY   OF  THE    POEMS   LEADS. 

"'  Thou  art  not  what  thou  seem'st." 

— Lucrece,  600. 

While  the  reader  may  have  doubts  as  to  the  authorship 
of  the  dedications  prefixed  to  the  two  poems,  I  have  af- 
firmed and  now  reiterate  that  he  will  accept  as  an  es- 
tablished fact  that  each  of  the  two  poems  was  the  work  of 
one  man  only,  and  he  also  believes  and  always  will  believe 
with  unshaken  and  unshakable  faith  that  he  who  wrote  the 
two  poems  was  the  William  Shakespeare  or  Shake-speare 
of  the  plays.  The  poems,  therefore,  furnish  the  key  which 
in  the  hands  of  the  skillful  scholar  and  searcher  will 
unlock  the  door  of  the  literary  chamber  which  contains 
the  name  of  the  hidden  composer  of  the  best  and  most 
noteworthy  portions  of  the  plays.  I  may  not  be  that 
scholar  and  searcher,  and  I  may  give  an  erroneous  opinion, 
but  I  shall  at  least  have  paved  the  way  for  more  learned 
examiners,  who  will  be  able  to  find  the  real  author  of  the 
poems  and  to  certify  whether  I  am  right  or  wrong. 

An  examination  of  the  two  poems  shows  the  following 
peculiarities : 

First. — That  the  writer  was  very  much  in  the  habit  of 
using  the  termination  ''eth"  as  applied  to  the  third  person 
singular  of  the  indicative  mood  and  present  tense. 

To  facilitate  the  examination,  I  have  separated  and 
alphabetically  arranged  the  verbs  so  used  in  each  poem. 
In  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  they  are  as  follows: 


356  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

"Ariseth,  barketh,  breaketh  (3),  breatheth  (3),  breed- 
eth,  burneth,  coasteth,  comforteth,  deviseth,  doteth, 
falleth,  feedeth,  filleth  (2),  gazeth,  goeth,  haste th  (2), 
heaveth,  languisheth,  leadeth,  listeth,  looketh,  loseth, 
marketh,  iioteth,  presenteth,  raineth,  recketh,  relenteth, 
relieve  th,  remaineth,  resisteth,  revive  th,  seemeth  (2), 
seizeth,  shooteth,  sinketh,  sorteth,  staineth,  suggesteth, 
swelleth,  thriveth,  tormenteth,  upheaveth,  waxeth,  whet- 
teth,  willeth." 

In  the  Rape  of  Lucrece,  they  are  as  follows: 

"Attendeth,  awaketh,  boundeth,  burneth,  coucheth, 
dazzleth,  dreadeth,  easeth,  excelleth,  fawneth,  feareth, 
gazeth,  granteth,  greeteth,  healeth,  imparteth,  leadeth, 
lendeth,  lighteth,  maketh,  marcheth,  needeth,  panteth, 
pineth,  pleadeth,  rouseth,  slaketh,  smiteth,  starteth, 
stealeth,  suspecteth,  urgeth,  vanisheth,  wanteth  (2)." 

In  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  of  eleven  hundred  and 
ninety-four  lines,  there  are  fifty  uses  of  the  termination 
"eth."  In  the  Rape  of  Lucrece,  containing  eighteen 
hundred  and  fifty-five  lines,  there  are  thirty-five  instances 
of  such  use. 

No  such  frequent  use  of  this  termination  is  found 
either  in  the  works  of  Drayton  or  Dekker.  While  both 
used  the  termination  occasionally,  they  only  used  it 
moderately.  It  was  not  so  as  to  Bacon.  He  indulged  in 
an  excessive  use  of  the  termination,  much  more  so  than 
any  other  writer  of  that  time.  This  will  clearly  appear 
to  the  general  reader  by  a  perusal  of  his  letters  and  literary 
or  legal  papers.  I  will  give  a  few  instances  from  his 
works,  casually  jotted  down: 

"Abateth,  accepteth,  addeth,  agree  th,  appeareth,  ask- 
eth,   aspireth,   assureth,   becometh,   beholdeth,   breaketh. 


WHITHER  THE  PATHWAY  OF  THE  POEMS  LEADS.   357 

breedeth,  bringeth  (2),  carrieth,  causeth,  change th,  cometh 
(2),  consul teth,  consumeth,  containeth,  corrupteth,  dash- 
eth,  depriveth,  desireth,  destroyeth,  diminisheth,  distill- 
eth,  disturbeth,  divideth,  eclipseth,  embaseth,  encourageth, 
endangereth,  enricheth,  envieth  (2),  establisheth,  esteem- 
eth,  examineth,  expresseth,  extinguisheth,  falleth,  faireth 
(2),  filleth,  flieth,  followeth  (3),gathereth,  giveth,  goeth(3), 
governeth,  healeth,  holdeth  (2),  hurteth,  importeth,  im- 
poseth,  inclineth,  increaseth,  incurreth,  inspireth,  inviteth, 
joineth,  keepeth  (2),  kindleth  (2),  knoweth  (2),  leave th, 
looketh,    loseth,    maketh    (9),    no  teth    (4),    openeth    (2), 
passe  th    (3),    perfecteth,    perplexeth,    pointeth,    presseth, 
pretendeth,   prevaileth,   procureth,   propoundeth,   putteth 
(2),  raise  th,  ravisheth,  redoubleth,  remaineth,  remove  th, 
requireth,  resembleth,  resteth,  returneth,  saileth,  seemeth 
(6),  selleth,  serveth  (2),  settle  th,  sheweth  (2),  signifieth, 
sinketh,  sorteth,  spendeth,  spreadeth,  standeth  (3),  stay- 
eth,    studieth,    sufficeth,    taketh,    talketh,    teacheth    (2), 
thinketh,  threateneth,  traduce  th,  traveleth  (3),  troubleth, 
turneth  (6),  walketh,  windeth,  worketh,  yieldeth," 

While  this  use  of  the  termination  "eth"  was  a  peculiar- 
ity of  that  era,  and  while  instances  of  its  use  may  be 
found  in  the  works  of  Drayton  and  Dekker,  Bacon's 
works  are  conspicuous  for  the  profuse  and  extravagant 
use  thereof. 

Secondly. — ^The  writer  of  the  two  poems  often  used  a 
word  which  was  not  to  be  found  by  me,  after  diligent 
search,  but  once  in  the  writings  of  Drayton  and  Dekker. 
I  refer  to  the  word  "whereat,"  inserting  here  in  full  for 
the  reader's  convenience  the  lines  wherein  it  is  foimd. 

In  Venus  and  Adonis,  the  reader  will  find  it  thus 
used: 


358  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 


"The  boar,  quoth  she;  whereat  a  sudden  pale." 

— L.  589. 

"  Whereat,  the  impartial  gazer  late  did  wonder." 

— L.  748. 

"  Whereat  amazed,  as  one  that  unaware." 

— L.  823. 

"And  now  she  beats  her  heart,  whereat  it  groans." 

— L.  829. 

"  Whereat  she  starts,  like  one  that  spies  an  adder." 

— L.  878. 

"  Whereat  her  tears  began  to  turn  their  tide." 

— L.  979. 

"  Whereat  she  leaps  that  was  but  late  forlorn." 

— L.  1026. 

"  Whereat  each  tributary  subject  quakes." 

— L.  1045. 

In  the  Rape  of  Lucrece  it  is  used  twice,  thus: 
"  Whereat  a  waxen  torch  forthwith  he  lighteth." 

— L.  178. 

"  Whereat  she  smiled  with  so  sweet  a  cheer." 

— L.  264. 

Drayton  seems  to  have  been  particularly  fond  of  the 
word  ''whenas"  and  he  uses  it  a  great  deal  in  the  "  Barons' 
Wars,"  so  much  so  that  it  will  attract  the  reader's  atten- 
tion, but  neither  he  nor  Dekker  use  the  word  "whereat." 
"Whenas"  seems  to  have  been  a  Draytonian  word. 

If  the  reader  will  take  up  Bacon's  "Apology  in  certain 
imputations  concerning  the  late  Earl  of  Essex"  and  the 
"History  of  Henry  the  Seventh,"  he  will  find  the  use 
by  Bacon  of  the  word  "whereat,"  as  follows: 

"She  saw  plainly  whereat  1  leveled." 

—Vol.  3,  p.  221. 

"  Whereat  she  seemed  again  offended." 

—Vol.  3,  p.  224. 

"  Whereat  I  remember  she  took." 

—Vol.  3,  p.  227. 


WHITHER   THE    PATHWAY   OF   THE   POEMS   LEADS.     359 

"  Whereat  there  was  great  murmur." 

—Vol.  5,  p.  22. 

"  Whereat  there  was  much  wondering." 

—Vol.  5,  p.  25. 

"  Whereat  Hippias  was  offended." 

—Vol.  6,  p.  79. 

Thirdly. — There  is  another  pecuUarity  of  the  two  poems 
which  deserves  to  be  particularly  pointed  out  and  which 
has  hitherto  escaped  the  notice  of  commentators.  I  refer 
to  the  unusual  number  of  similes  indulged  in  by  the  com- 
poser. These  may  be  separated  into  two  groups  desig- 
nated by  the  words  "as"  and  "like."  In  the  Venus  and 
Adonis  there  are  fifty-nine  similes,  and  in  the  Rape  of 
Lucrece  there  are  eighty-two,  making  in  these  two  poems 
one  hundred  and  forty-one  in  all.  This  large  number  of 
similes  in  the  Venus  and  Adonis  I  set  out  at  length,  as 
follows : 

"As  coals  of  glowing  fire.  As  an  empty  eagle.  As  on 
a  prey.  As  the  spring.  As  in  disdain.  As  from  a  fur- 
nace. As  they  were  mad.  As  a  dying  coal.  As  apt  as 
new-fallen  snow.  As  the  wind  is  hushed.  As  the  wolf 
doth  grin.  As  the  berry.  As  the  bright  sun.  As  the 
fleet-foot  roe.  As  poor  birds.  As  those  poor  birds.  As 
air  and  water.  As  if  another  chase.  As  burning  fevers. 
As  mountain  snow.  As  caterpillars  do.  As  one  that 
unawares.  As  night  wanderers  often  are.  As  one  full  of 
despair.  As  one  with  treasure  laden.  As  falcon  to  the 
lure.  As  the  snail.  As  when  the  wind.  As  dry  com- 
bustions matter.  Like  a  bold-faced  suitor.  Like  a  dive 
dapper.  Like  a  fairy.  Like  a  nymph.  Like  sturdy 
trees.  Like  misty  vapors.  Like  a  man.  Like  a  band. 
Like  heaven's  thunder.  Like  fire.  Like  feathered  wings. 
Like   a   melancholy  malcontent.     Like   a  falling  plume. 


360  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Like  a  lowly  lover.  Chorus-like.  Like  two  silver  doves. 
Like  a  jade.  Like  a  red  morn.  Like  the  deadly  bullet. 
Like  the  fair  sun.  Like  the  moon  in  water.  Glutton-like. 
Like  a  wild  bird.  Like  the  fro  ward  infant.  Like  a  pale- 
faced  coward.  Like  lawn  being  spread.  Like  to  a  mortal 
butcher.  Like  glow^^orms.  Like  an  earthquake.  Like 
thyself,  all  stained.  Like  a  labyrinth.  Like  the  wanton 
mermaid's  song.  Like  sunshine  after  rain.  Like  a 
glutton  dies.  Like  shrill-tongued  tapsters.  Like  a  milch 
doe.  Like  one  that  spies  an  adder.  Like  soldiers  when. 
Like  milk  and  blood.  Like  the  proceedings.  Like  sluices. 
Like  a  stormy  day.  Like  many  clouds.  Like  pearls  in 
glass.  Like  stars  ashamed  of  day.  Like  a  king  per- 
plexed.    Like  two  thieves.     Like  a  vapor." 

In  the  Rape  of  Lucrece,  the  similes  are  as  follows: 
"As  bright  as  heaven's  beauties.  As  is  the  morning's 
silver-melting  dew.  As  one  of  which.  As  from  this  cold 
flint.  As  in  revenge.  As  roses.  As  lawn.  As  corn  o'er 
grown.  As  servants.  As  minutes  fill  up  hours.  As  their 
captain.  As  those  bars.  As  if  the  heavens.  As  the  fair 
and  fiery  pointed  sun.  As  if  between  them.  As  the  grim 
lion.  As  one  in  dead  of  night.  As  fowl  hears  falcon's 
bells.  As  a  thought  unacted.  As  the  full-fed  hound. 
As  palmers  chat.  As  smoke  from  ^Etna.  As  from  a 
mountain  spring.  As  a  child.  As  the  dark  earth.  As 
frets  upon  an  instrument.  As  the  poor  frighted  deer. 
As  winter  meads.  As  the  earth.  As  marble.  As  in  a 
rough-growTi  grove.  As  lagging  fowls.  As  heaven.  As 
if  some  mermaid.  As  subtle  Sinon.  As  if  with  grief. 
As  Priam  him  did  cherish.  As  through  an  arch.  As  from 
a  dream.  As  silly  jeering  idiots.  Coward-like.  Like  a 
virtuous  deed.     Like  little  frosts.     Like  a  virtuous  monu- 


WHITHER   THE    PATHWAY    OF   THE    POEMS    LEADS.      361 

ment.  Like  an  April  daisy.  Like  marigolds.  Like  golden 
threads.  Like  ivory  globes.  Like  a  foul  usurper.  Like 
straggling  slaves.  Like  a  new-killed  bird.  Like  a  trumpet. 
Like  a  falcon  towering.  Like  a  white  hind.  Like  deceit. 
Like  whirlwinds.  Like  a  troubled  ocean.  Like  Gods. 
Like  a  jade.  Like  to  a  bankrupt  beggar.  Like  a  thievish 
dog.  Like  a  wearied  lamb.  Like  water  that.  Drone- 
like. Like  still-pining  Tantalus.  Like  the  snow-white 
swan.  Like  sluices.  Like  an  unpracticed  swimmer.  Like 
a  gentle  flood.  Like  a  melting  eye.  Like  the  dewy  night. 
Like  ivory  conduits.  Like  a  goodly  champaign  plain. 
Like  a  press  of  people.  Like  dying  coals.  Like  bright 
things  stained.  Like  a  heavy-hanging  bell.  Like  a  con- 
stant and  confirmed  devil.  Like  wildfire.  Like  rainbows 
in  the  sky.  Like  old  acquaintance.  Like  a  late-sacked 
island." 

A  partial  examination  of  the  works  of  Bacon  shows 
that  he  abounds  in  similes.  I  will  give  the  reader  a  few 
examples  of  them,  premising  that  many  others  can  be 
found  in  his  writings. 

"As  an  hireling.  As  the  sticks  of  a  faggot.  As  the 
lawyers  speak.  As  old  wives'  fables.  As  young  men. 
As  a  courtesan.  As  with  servants.  As  the  forbidden 
fruit.  As  were  Ceres,  Bacchus.  As  a  pasquil  or  satire. 
As  vain  princes.  As  the  chaff.  As  a  watch  by  night. 
As  with  a  tide.  As  the  grass.  As  chariots  swift.  As  a 
tale  told.  As  flames  of  fire.  As  ships.  As  water.  As 
the  shrines.  As  the  serpent  of  Moses.  As  the  statue  of 
Polyphemus.  As  a  nursery  garden.  As  the  ark  of  Noah. 
As  the  waters.  As  the  flight  of  birds.  As  the  swarming 
of  bees.  As  a  Tartar's .  bow.  As  a  flight  of  birds.  As 
from  a  rock.     As  with  a  strong  tide.     As  an  heaven  of 


362  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

stars.  As  Queen  Mary  said  of  Calais.  As  a  year  with 
two  harvests.  As  one  awaked.  As  great  engines.  As  a 
phoenix.  As  Atalanta's  balls.  As  Africanus  was.  As  a 
vanity  and  ventosity.  As  a  plant.  As  pyramids.  As 
the  greyhound.  As  the  hare.  As  Periander.  As  the 
priest.  As  Julius  Caesar  did.  As  flowers  of  Florence. 
Like  the  images  of  Cassius  and  Brutus.  Like  fruitful 
showers.  Like  the  benefits  of  heaven.  Like  an  ill  mower. 
Like  the  fruitful  tree.  Like  noble  gold.  like  waters 
after  a  tempest.  Like  branches  of  a  tree.  Like  the  pulling 
out  of  an  aching  tooth.  Like  a  piece  of  stuff.  Like  a 
child  following  a  bird.  Like  the  fish  Remora.  Like  a 
bell-ringer.  Like  the  miller  of  Cranchester.  Like  an  old 
christening.  Like  another  iEneas.  Like  a  pedant.  Like 
thunder  afar  off.  Like  a  churchman.  Like  a  hawk. 
Like  a  perspective  glass.  Like  Penelope's  web.  Like  an 
alphabet.  Like  the  humor  of  Tiberius.  Like  the  frets  on 
the  roof  of  houses.  Like  a  lark.  Like  waters  to  physi- 
cians. Like  a  helmet.  liike  a  good  Protestant.  Like  a 
broker's  shop.  Like  Hercules'  column.  like  a  foolish 
bold  mountebank." 

If  I  should  say  that  similes  occur  often  in  the  works  of 
Drayton  and  Dekker,  as  also  in  the  works  of  other  poets 
of  that  era,  and  that  they  were  even  found  in  abundance, 
I  should  have  to  say  that  in  Bacon's  works  they  occur  in 
superabundance. 

There  is,  however,  one  play,  designated  as  a  doubtful 
Shakespeare  play,  called  "King  Edward  the  Third,"  a 
play  which  will  be  hereafter  referred  to,  in  which  the  same 
profusion  of  similes  abounds  which  is  so  noticeable  in 
Bacon's  works.  To  save  the  reader  the  trouble  of  search- 
ing for  them,  I  quote  them  from  the  play  as  follows : 


WHITHER    THE    PATHWAY    OF    THE    POEMS    LEADS.      363 

"As  at  the  coronation  of  a  king.  As  an  abstract  or  a 
brief.  As  a  May  blossom.  As  a  throne.  As  plenteous 
as  the  sun.  As  on  the  fragrant  rose.  As  a  sail.  As  a 
lion.  As  a  kneeling  vassal.  As  the  vantage  of  the  wind. 
As  when  the  empty  eagle  flies.  As  on  an  anvil.  As  a 
blushing  maid.  As  a  shade.  As  a  mournful  knell.  As 
black  as  powder.  As  when  a  whirlwind.  As  things  long 
lost.  As  a  bear.  Like  to  fruitful  showers.  Like  a  con- 
queror. Like  the  lazy  drone.  Like  the  April  sun.  Like  a 
country  swain.  Like  a  cloak.  Like  inconstant  clouds. 
Like  her  oriental  red.  Like  to  a  flattering  glass.  Like  a 
glass.  Like  a  fading  taper.  Like  the  sun.  Like  an 
hmnble  shadow.  Like  as  the  wind.  Like  to  a  meadow. 
Like  sweetest  harmony.  Like  fiery  dragons.  Like  un- 
natural sons.  Raven-like.  Like  an  oven.  Like  a  totter- 
ing wall.  Like  a  skittish  and  untamed  colt.  Like  a 
thirsty  tiger.  Like  stiff-grown  oaks.  Like  Perseus'  shield. 
Like  a  sapless  tree.  Like  emmets  on  a  bank.  Lion-like. 
Haggard-like.  Like  the  continual  laboring  woodman's  axe. 
Like  a  silver  quarry.  Like  a  half  moon.  Like  a  soldier. 
Like  a  ring.    Like  a  slender  point.    Like  a  Roman   peer." 

The  reader  will  pardon  the  digression  here  that  he  may 
first  consider  the  style  of  the  writer  of  Edward  the  Third 
by  reference  to  one  quotation,  which  is  only  one  of  many 
philosophical  passages  in  the  play;  and  secondly,  that  he 
may  obtain  a  clue  to  the  authorship  by  the  setting  out  of 
another  quotation  from  the  play  paralleled  by  a  few 
sentences  from  Bacon's  Essay  on  Death, 

In  Act  2,  Scene  2,  Warwick,  addressing  his  daughter, 

says: 

"An  honorable  grave  is  more  esteem'd 
Than  the  polluted  closet  of  a  king: 


364  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

The  greater  man,  the  greater  is  the  thing, 
Be  it  good  or  bad,  that  he  shall  undertake : 
An  unreputed  mote,  flying  in  the  sun, 
Presents  a  greater  substance  than  it  is; 
The  freshest  summer's  day  doth  sooner  taint 
The  loathed  carrion  that  it  seems  to  kiss: 
Deep  are  the  blows  made  with  a  mighty  axe. 
That  sin  doth  ten  times  aggravate  itself 
That  is  committed  in  a  holy  place : 
An  evil  deed,  done  by  authority. 
Is  sin  and  subornation:  Deck  an  ape 
In  tissue,  and  the  beauty  of  the  robe 
Adds  but  the  greater  scorn  unto  the  beast. 
A  spacious  field  of  reason  could  I  urge 
Between  his  glory,  daughter,  and  thy  shame. 
That  poison  shows  worst  in  a  golden  cup; 
Dark  night  seems  darker  by  the  lightning  flash; 
Lilies  that  fester  smell  far  worse  than  weeds; 
And  every  glory  that  inclines  to  sin, 
The  shame  is  trebled  by  the  opposite." 

If  the  reader  will  peruse  the  play,  he  will  discover  that 
the  author  devotes  a  great  part  of  the  play  to  such  philo- 
sophical utterances  in  verse  as  are  found  in  the  Shake- 
speare plays  and  the  two  poems. 

The  other  quotation  is  taken  from  the  fourth  scene  of 
the  fourth  act,  and  the  first  impression  of  the  reader  will 
be  that  it  was  either  copied  from  or  originated  by  the 
author  of  Bacon's  Essay  on  Death. 

AUDLEY   says: 

''To  die  is  as  common  as  to  live; 
The  one  in  choice,  the  other  holds  in  chase, 
For  from  the  instant  we  begin  to  live, 
We  do  pursue  and  hunt  the  time  to  die. 


WHITHER   THE    PATHWAY    OF   THE    POEMS    LEADS.      365 

First  bud  we,  then  we  blow,  and  after  seed, 

Then  presently  we  fall,  and  as  a  shade 

Follows  the  body,  so  we  follow  death. 

If  then,  we  hunt  for  death,  why  do  we  fear  it? 

Or,  if  we  fear  it,  why  do  we  follow  it? 

If  we  do  fear,  with  fear  we  do  but  aid 

The  thing  we  fear  to  seize  on  us  the  sooner. 

If  we  fear  not,  then  no  resolv'd  proffer 

Can  overthrow  the  limit  of  our  fate ; 

For  whether  ripe  or  rotten,  drop  we  shall 

As  we  do  draw  the  lottery  of  our  doc-nj." 

BACON  says: 

» 

"It  is  as  natural  to  die  as  to  be  born;  and  to  a  little 
infant,  perhaps  the  one  is  as  painful  as  the  other.  He 
that  dies  in  an  earnest  pursuit  is  like  one  that  is  wo\mded 
in  hot  blood,  who  for  the  time  scarce  feels  the  hurt:  And 
therefore  a  mind  fixed  and  bent  upon  somewhat  that  is 
good,  doth  avert  the  dolor  of  death.  I  have  often  thought 
upon  death,  and  I  find  it  the  least  of  all  evils.  All  that  is 
past  is  as  a  dream;  and  he  that  hopes  or  depends  upon 
time  coming,  dreams  waking.  So  much  of  our  life  as  we 
have  discovered  is  already  dead;  and  all  those  hours 
which  we  share,  even  from  the  breasts  of  our  mother  until 
we  return  to  our  grandmother,  the  earth,  are  part  of  our 
dying  days;  whereof  even  this  is  one,  and  those  that 
succeed  are  of  the  same  nature,  for  we  die  daily;  and  as 
others  have  given  place  to  us,  so  we  must  in  the  end  give 
way  to  others." 

There  are  resemblances  also  between  the  play  and  the 
poems,  as,  for  instance,  in  Act  4,  Scene  4,  the  Herald  says : 
"Seeing  thy  body's  living  date  expired,"  while  in  Lucrece, 
line  25,  the  poet  says,  "  An  expired  date,  canceled  ere  well 


366  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

begun."  In  Act  3,  Scene  3,  Edward  says,  "Against  the 
kind  enibracenient  of  thy  fiiends";  while  in  A'enus  and 
Adonis,  Une  312,  the  poet  says,  "  Beating  his  kind  embrace- 
ment  with  her  heels."     In  Act  3,  Scene  1,  the  Mariner  says, 

"As  when  the  empty  eagle  flies, 
To  satisfy  his  hungry  griping  maw." 

While  in  Venus  and  Adonis,  line  55,  the  poet  says, 
"Even  as  an  empty  eagle,  sharp  by  fast." 

That  I  am  not  singular  in  calling  the  reader's  attention 
to  this  remarkable  play  of  Edward  the  Third,  I  insert  the 
following  from  the  first  volume,  page  125,  of  Halliwell- 
PhiUip's  "Outlines,"  showing  that  he  also  had  been  so 
struck  by  the  style  and  phraseology  of  that  play  as  to  give 
it  the  particular  notice  embodied  in  the  following  extract: 

"  In  an  anonymous  and  popular  drama  entitled  'The 
Reign  of  King  Edward  the  Third'  produced  in  or  before 
the  year  1595,  there  are  occasional  passages  which,  by  most 
judgments,  will  be  accepted  as  having  been  wTitten  either 
by  Shakespeare  or  by  an  exceedingly  dexterous  and  suc- 
cessful imitator  of  one  of  his  then  favorite  styles  of  com- 
position. For  who  but  one  or  the  other  could  have  en- 
dowed a  kind  and  gentle  lady  with  the  ability  of  replying 
to  the  impertinent  addresses  of  a  foolish  sovereign  in 
words  such  as  these: 

'  As  easy  may  my  intellectual  soul 
Be  lent  away  and  yet  my  body  live, 
As  lend  my  body,  palace  to  my  soul, 
Away  from  her,  and  yet  retain  my  soul. 
My  body  is  her  bower,  her  court,  her  abbey. 
And  she  an  angel,  pure,  divine,  unspotted; 
If  I  should  lend  her  house,  my  lord,  to  thee, 
I  kill  my  poor  soul,  and  my  poor  soul  me.' " 


WHITHER   THE    PATHWAY    OF   THE    POEMS    LEADS.      367 

The  reader  will  next  find  in  the  two  poems  a  general 
style  and  manner  of  versification  very  different  from  that 
which  characterizes  the  poetry  of  Drayton  and  Dekker. 
Drayton  makes  his  principal  personage,  whether  hero  or 
heroine,  the  narrator,  generally  summoning  them  from 
the  mansions  of  the  dead  to  recite  their  woes,  their  suffer- 
ings or  their  achievements,  and  the  poetry  is  of  the  narra- 
tive or  descriptive  style.  This  characteristic  of  Drayton 
was  noted  by  Schlegel  when  he  wrote  his  eulogy  upon 
the  play  of  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  in  the  mistaken  belief  that 
he  was  eulogizing  Shakespeare.  Dekker  also  indulged  in 
the  descriptive  style,  as  will  manifestly  appear  to  the 
reader  who  will  peruse  his  ''Canaan's  Calamity"  (which 
follows  the  Venus  and  Adonis  versification),  or  any  one 
of  his  lengthy  poems. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  poet  of  the  Venus  and  Adonis 
and  the  Rape  of  Lucrece  is  distinguished  by  his  philo- 
sophical utterances.  Hazlitt's  criticism  embodies  the 
truth  when  he  says:  "The  two  poems  appear  to  us  like  a 
couple  of  ice  houses.  They  are  about  as  hard,  as  glitter- 
ing and  as  cold.  The  author  seems  all  the  time  to  be 
thinking  of  his  verses  and  not  of  his  subject — not  of  what 
his  characters  would  feel,  but  of  what  they  shall  say.  The 
whole  is  labored  up-hill  work.  The  poet  is  perpetually 
singling  out  the  difficulties  of  the  art  to  make  an  exhibi- 
tion of  his  skill  in  wrestling  with  them.  A  beautiful 
thought  is  sm-e  to  be  lost  in  an  endless  commentary  upon 
it."  Venus  philosophizes  about  jealousy,  nature,  love, 
death,  the  world,  and  beauty. 

In  the  Rape  of  Lucrece,  Tarquin,  after  rising  from  his 
couch  and  lighting  his  torch,  devotes  ten  full  long  stanzas 
of  the  poem  to  premeditation  upon  the  dangers  of  his 


368  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

enterprise;  eight  more  to  solicitation;  while  Lucrece  uses 
ten  more  stanzas  in  reply.  After  the  accomplishment  of 
his  purpose,  fifteen  more  stanzas  are  consumed  by  Lucrece 
in  a  digressive  address  to  Night,  eight  more  similarly  to 
Opportunity,  fourteen  more  to  Time  as  the  master  of 
opportunity,  eight  more  she  spends  in  caviling  and  apos- 
trophizing Day,  four  in  addressing  the  birds  of  the  morn- 
ing, and  especially  Philomel,  and  then  she  uses  five  more 
stanzas  in  the  making  of  her  will.  As  Rolfe  says,  in  his 
introduction  to  the  poems,  ''In  Lucrece,  the  action  is 
delayed,  and  delayed  that  every  minute  particular  may  be 
described,  every  minor  incident  recorded.  In  the  new- 
ness of  her  suffering  and  shame,  Lucrece  finds  time  for  an 
elaborate  tirade  appropriate  to  the  theme  'Night,'  another 
to  that  of  'Time,'  another  to  that  of  ' Opportunity.'  Each 
topic  is  exhausted.  Then  studiously  a  new  incident  is 
introduced,  and  its  significance  for  the  emotions  is  drained 
to  the  last  drop  in  a  new  tirade."  There  is  nothing  in  all 
this  to  remind  one  of  anything  similar  either  in  Drayton  or 
Dekker,  nor  in  any  other  writer  of  the  time  except  Bacon. 
It  reminds  us  of  Bacon's  Essay  upon  Death,  upon  Love, 
upon  Beauty,  upon  the  Vicissitude  and  Mutations  of  Time 
and  upon  Nature.  It  recalls  also  his  remarks  in  his  letter 
of  advice  to  Essex  upon  Opportunity,  Vol.  5,  p.  247.  "I 
will  shoot  my  fool's  bolt,"  he  says,  "since  you  will  have 
it  so.  The  Earl  of  Ormond  to  be  encouraged  and  com- 
forted. Above  all  things,  the  garrison  to  be  instantly 
provided  for.     For  opportunity  maketh  a  thief." 

Since  writing  the  above,  I  have  been  favored  with  a 
perusal  of  "The  Mystery  of  William  Shakespeare,"  by 
Webb,  in  which  the  author  calls  attention  to  another 
peculiarity  of  the  writer  of  the  poems;  namely,  that  he 


WHITHER   THE    PATHWAY   OF  THE    POEMS   LEADS.     369 

was  versed  in  the  law;  and  he  affirms  that  if  anything  is 
certain  in  regard  to  the  poems,  it  is  certain  that  the  author 
was  a  lawyer.  Now,  neither  Drayton  nor  Dekker  were 
lawyers.  "The  poems,"  he  says,  "sparkle  with  a  frosty 
brilliance  which  led  Mr.  Hazlitt  to  compare  them  with 
palaces  of  ice.  This  frosty  brilliance,  according  to  Pro- 
fessor Dowden,  is  the  light  with  which  the  ethical  writings 
of  Bacon  gleam,  and  which  plays  are  the  worldly  maxims 
which  constitute  his  philosophy  of  life." 

Finally,  the  accomplished  Shakespearean  scholar  ob- 
serves that  "the  poems  abound  with  endless  exercises  and 
variations  on  such  themes  as  Beauty,  Lust,  and  Death;  as 
Night,  Opportunity,  and  Time.  In  reality  they  are  essays 
of  the  philosopher  in  verse;  and  even  Love  is  treated  in 
the  poems  exactly  as  he  treats  it  in  the  Essays.  In  the 
poems,  the  Queen  of  Love  proposes  to  sell  herself  to  the 
young  Adonis.  The  consideration  is  to  be  'a  thousand 
kisses,'  the  number  to  be  doubled  in  default  of  immediate 
payment;  the  deed  is  to  be  executed  without  delay;  and 
the  purchaser  is  to  set  his  sign-manual  on  her  wax-red 
lips.  The  Roman  matron,  in  her  agony  of  shame,  makes 
the  abridgment  of  a  will  in  which  she  bequeaths  her  reso- 
lution to  her  husband,  her  honor  to  the  knife,  her  shame 
to  Tarquin,  and  her  fame  to  those  who  still  believed  in 
her  purity;  and  Collatinus  is  to  oversee  the  will." 

There  is  one  other  fact  to  be  considered  which  militates 
against  the  Drayton  theory.  The  poem  of  Venus  and 
Adonis  is  singularly  free  from  Warwickshireisms,  to  use  a 
word  of  Morgan.  Wliat  he  says  at  page  11  of  his  "Study 
in  the  Warwickshire  Dialect"  is  unanswerable.  "If  the 
Venus  and  Adonis  was  written  in  Warwickshire  by  a 
Warwickshire  lad  who  had  never  been  out  of  it,  it  ought  to 


370  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

contain  a  little  Warwickshire  word  to  betray  the  precincts 
of  its  writer  and  its  conception.  Richard  Grant  White 
loved  to  imagine  young  Shakespeare,  like  young  Chatter- 
ton  and  many  another  young  poet,  coming  up  to  London 
with  his  first  poem  in  his  pocket.  'In  any  case,  we  may 
be  sure  that  the  poem,'  he  says,  'was  written  some  years 
before  it  was  printed;  and  it  may  have  been  brought  by 
the  young  poet  from  Stratford  in  manuscript,  and  read  by 
a  select  circle,  according  to  the  custom  of  the  time,  before 
it  was  published.'  If  William  Shakespeare  wrote  the  poem 
at  all,  it  would  seem  as  if  Mr.  White's  proposition  is  beyond 
question,  so  far  as  mere  dates  go.  But  if  the  result  of  a 
glossary  of  the  Warwickshire  dialect,  as  paralleled  with 
the  poem,  is  to  discover  no  Warwickshire  in  a  poem  written 
by  a  Warwickshire  man  in  Warwickshire,  or  soon  after 
he  left  it  to  go  elsewhere,  it  would  look  extremely  like 
corroboration  of  the  evidence  of  the  dates  by  that  of  the 
dialect." 

I  have  followed  the  path  of  the  two  poems,  and  that 
path  points  Baconward.  The  facts  elicited  by  my  exami- 
nation are  before  the  reader  and  he  can  draw  his  own 
conclusion  from  those  facts.  Bearing  in  mind  that  William 
Shaksper  of  Stratford-on-Avon  is  eliminated  from  consider- 
ation because  of  his  illiteracy,  he  will  understand  that  the 
question  of  the  authorship  of  the  poems  and  pla3^s  is  to 
be  determined  only  by  the  weight,  not  of  direct,  but  of 
circumstantial  evidence.  Consequently,  his  opinion  as  to 
the  authorship  of  the  poems  may  differ  from  and  be  better 
than  mine,  especially  if  he  will  carefully  study  the  two 
poems. 


CHAPTER  XXX. 

TROILUS    AND    CRESSIDA    AND    THE    TAMING    OF   THE    SHREW 

EXAMINED. 

''Faith,  thou  hast  some  crotchets  in  thy  head  now." 

— Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  ii,  1. 

It  was  not  ni}^  design  in  writing  this  book  to  prepare 
and  give  to  the  reader  an  examination  and  analysis  of  all 
the  Shakespeare  plays,  beca\ise  the  examination  is  only 
for  the  purpose  of  trying  to  identify,  if  possible,  some  one 
or  more  of  the  writers  of  the  plays. 

I  have  therefore  limited  the  consideration  of  the  plays 
to  a  part  only,  including  therein  some  of  those  which 
Meres  in  his  ''Palladis  Tamia"  referred  to  and  which  were 
composed  before  1598.  The  reader  of  course  will  under- 
stand that  I  am  not  seeking  to  extol  the  beauties  or  to 
criticise  the  blemishes,  if  any,  of  the  plays  examined.  In 
the  consideration  of  the  question  of  the  authorship  of  the 
plays  specified  in  this  and  the  succeeding  chapters,  I  shall 
endeavor  to  bring  the  facts  before  the  reader,  so  that  he 
and  I  can  draw  our  own  conclusions  and  opinions  from 
the  facts.  In  order  not  to  be  tedious,  I  have  confined 
my  examination  to  a  consideration  of  the  style  of  a  few  of 
the  participants  in  their  composition. 

I  will  begin  with  the  two  plays  entitled  Troilus  and 
Cressida  and  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew. 

The  first  fact  to  which  I  will  call  the  reader's  attention, 
as  attested  by  reliable  evidence,  is  that  the  play  of  Troilus 
and  Cressida  was  originally  written  b}'^  Thomas  Dekker 
and  Henrv  Chettle. 


372  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

My  authority  for  this  statement  of  fact  is  the  Diary  of 
Phihp  Henslowe,  which,  as  heretofore  shown,  is  recog- 
nized as  a  rehable  authority  by  all  the  commentators. 
It  is  not  only  a  reliable  authority,  but  it  is  the  very  best 
authority  on  the  subject  of  the  original  composition  of 
some  of  the  so-called  Shakespeare  plays.  Henslowe's 
Diary  is  entitled  to  a  high  degree  of  credit,  because  it  was 
kept  by  a  disinterested  man,  who  cared  nothing  for  any 
poet  or  dramatist  except  in  so  far  as  he  could  buy  his 
plays  for  the  smallest  amount  of  money;  and  his  Diary, 
outside  of  his  expense  account  and  common  transactions, 
is  in  effect  a  statement  of  the  names  of  the  plays,  either 
by  the  actual  name  given  to  the  play,  badly  spelled,  or 
an  identifying  reference  to  the  play  by  the  use  of  the  name 
of  some  one  of  the  chief  characters  therein,  together  with 
the  amount  paid  for  the  play,  or  book  as  it  was  then  called, 
and  very  often  the  names  of  the  several  wTiters  who  com- 
posed the  play.  As  has  already  been  stated  in  Chapter 
III,  the  Henslowe  Diary  shows  thai  Thomas  Dekker  and 
Henry  Chettle,  in  the  spring  of  the  year  1599,  wrote  the 
play  of  Troilus  and  Cressida.  Presumptively,  therefore, 
this  play  was  written  by  Dekker  and  Chettle,  unless  it 
can  be  shown  by  proof  which  w^ould  overcome  that  pre- 
sumption  that  Henslowe's  Diary  w^as,  as  to  that  point, 
incorrect;  or  that  there  w^ere  two  plays  on  that  subject 
with  the  same  name;  or  that  some  one  took  the  play  after 
Dekker  and  Chettle  had  written  it  and  added  to  or  sub- 
tracted from  the  original  composition.  Collier,  who 
edited  and  indexed  the  Diar}^,  appends  this  note  below 
Henslowe's  entry:  "Malone  quotes  this  remarkable  entry 
(showing  that  Dekker  and  Chettle  were  engaged  in  April, 
1599,  on  a  play  with  the  name  and  on  the  subject  adopted 


TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA :   TAMING  OF  THE  SHREW.      373 

by  our  great  dramatist)  in  Shaksper  by  Boswell,  3,  331. 
Henslowe  gets  a  little  nearer  the  proper  spelling  of  the 
title  in  a  subsequent  memorandum."  It  is  a  fact  not  to 
be  disputed  that  William  Shaksper  of  Stratford-on-Avon 
never  claimed  that  he  was  the  author  of  this  play. 

In  the  Stationers'  Register  is  an  entry  in  the  following 
terms : 

"  7  Feb.  1602-3,  Mr  Roberts  the  booke  of  Troilus  and 
Cresseda,  as  yt  is  acted  by  my  Lo  Chamberlens  men." 

Here  there  is  no  allusion  to  the  name  of  Shaksper  or 
Shakespeare.  But  in  1609,  the  name  of  ''William  Shake- 
speare" is  attached  to  an  edition  of  Troilus  and  Cressida, 
Such  a  publication  might  be  of  some  avail  to  overcome 
the  presumption  that  Dekker  and  Chettle  wrote  the  play, 
were  it  not  for  two  facts :  First,  that  the  attaching  of  that 
name  to  plays  which  William  Shaksper  did  not  write 
renders  such  an  ascription  of  no  value.  As  Morgan  in  his 
"  Myth, ' '  speaking  of  the  plays  ascribed  to  Shaksper,  says, 
"It  is  certainly  a  fact  that  none  of  these  from  Hamlet  to 
Fair  Em,  from  Lucrece  to  the  Merry  Devil  of  Edmonton, 
did  William  Shaksper  ever  either  deny  or  claim  as  progeny 
of  his.  He  fathered  them  all  as  they  came  and  no  ques- 
tions asked;  and  had  Ireland  been  at  hand  with  his  Vor- 
tigern,  it  might  have  gone  in  with  the  rest."  His  name 
was  attached,  as  we  have  seen,  to  the  play  of  Sir  John 
Oldcastle,  in  1600,  but  the  discovery  of  Henslowe's  Diary 
put  an  end  to  that  falsehood,  and  there  is  no  valid  reason 
why  the  statements  in  the  Diary  as  to  the  authorship  of 
Troilus  and  Cressida  should  not  also  be  accepted  for  truth. 

The  second  fact  is  that  the  careful  reader  of  the  play 
will  find  therein  the  style  of  two  different  persons.  Collier, 
a  Shakespeare  worshiper,  says,  in  his  introduction  to  the 


374  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

plays,  that  "  Everybody  must  be  struck  with  the  remark- 
able inequality  of  some  parts  of  Shakespeare's  Troilus  and 
Cressida,  especially  toward  the  cenclusion;  they  could 
hardly  have  been  written  by  the  pen  which  produced  the 
magnificent  speeches  of  Ulysses  and  the  other  earlier 
portions."  Verplanck,  one  of  the  most  reliable  editors, 
says,  as  to  this  play,  ''The  Shakespearean  critics  have 
found  ample  room  for  theory.  I  have  already  noticed  the 
supposition  of  Dryden  and  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  that  the 
play  was  left  imperfect,  or  hurried  to  a  conclusion  with 
little  care  after  parts  had  been  as  carefully  elaborated. 
Another  set  of  English  commentators,  from  Steevens  to 
Seymour,  have  satisfied  themselves  that  Shakespeare's 
genius  and  taste  had  been  expended  in  improving  the  work 
of  an  inferior  author,  whose  poorer  groundwork  still 
appeared  through  his  more  precious  decorations.  This, 
Steevens  supposes,  might  be  the  Troilus  and  Cressida  on 
which  Dekker  and  Chettle  were  employed  in  1599,  as  we 
learn  from  Henslowe's  Diary." 

These  opinions  and  guesses  made  by  the  commentators, 
great  and  small,  support  the  title  of  Dekker  and  Chettle 
to  the  authorship  of  Troilus  and  Cressida.  I  will  ask  the 
reader,  whether  a  believer  or  unbeliever  in  Shaksper's 
ability  to  write  a  play,  to  read  it  carefully,  and  then  to 
ask  himself  the  question,  "  Does  it  appear  on  its  face  to 
be  the  work  of  one  man  solely?"  and  he  will  be  forced  to 
answer  that  two  men,  at  the  least,  composed  it. 

I  have  already  shown  and  will  further  show  that  Dekker 
and  Chettle  had  not  only  the  ability  to  write  the  play,  but 
also  that  all  the  indicia  are  corroborative  of  their  original 
joint  authorship.  Groshart's  terse  poetical  description 
of  Dekker's  gifts  as  a  dramatic  poet  is  directly  in  point: 


TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA :   TAMING  OF  THE  SHREW.      375 

"  In  far  back  Jacobean  days,  the  name 
Of  Dekker  seen  on  any  title  page 
Drew  magnet-like,  men's  eyes;  he  was  the  rage. 
He  had  that  force  in  him  which  did  tame 
Even  rare  Ben;  or  call  it  mother  wit 
Or  genius,  his  lightest  works  still  live." 

The  following  from  Pearson's  "Memoir"  well  describes 
him:  "His  stores  of  wisdom  and  his  wealth  of  imagina- 
tion were  for  forty  years  lavished  on  the  world,  but  with 
little  or  no  reward  to  himself.  He  wrote  continually  under 
the  stress  of  want  and  was  often  compelled  to  seek  friendly 
aid  to  release  him  from  the  walls  of  a  debtor's  prison.  A 
wretched  hand-to-mouth  existence,  a  career  made  sordid 
by  the  constant  necessity  of  writing  for  daily  bread,  seems 
to  have  been  his  lot  from  first  to  last,  relieved,  perhaps, 
by  occasional  glimpses  of  happiness  and  repose  such  as 
he  must  have  enjoyed  when  composing  some  of  the  choicest 
of  the  series  of  dramas  which  constitute  his  chief  title  to 
fame." 

And  as  for  Henry  Chettle,  the  Diary  of  Henslowe  shows 
that  Chettle  was  esteemed  so  competent  as  a  play  writer, 
and  the  thrifty  and  enterprising  manager,  Henslowe,  was 
so  appreciative  of  his  ability  ''to  tickle  the  ears"  of  an 
English  audience,  that  he  secured  his  services  by  a  bond 
conditioned  that  he  would  write  plays  exclusively  for  the 
Earl  of  Nottingham's  players.  He  was  also  employed  to 
write  plays  for  the  Court.  He  was  a  printer,  a  stationer, 
and  so  much  of  a  ready  writer  that  he  was  a  participant 
in  the  composition  of  over  forty  plays,  among  which  may 
be  enumerated  Patient  Grissel,  The  Rising  of  Cardinal 
Wolsey,  in  two  parts.  The  Danish  Tragedy,  The  Death  of 
Robert  Earl  of  Huntington,  The  Step-mother's  Tragedy, 


376  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Robert  the  Second,  Damon  and  Pythias,  King  Sebastian 
of  Portugal,  Like  Quits  Like,  and  Vayvode. 

Passing  from  the  proof  of  the  competency  of  the  two 
dramatists,  let  us  take  up  the  discriminating  marks  and 
consider  first  the  oaths,  exclamations,  identical  expres- 
sions, and  ejaculations: 

The  ejaculations  are  as  follows: 

"  And  fell  so  roundly.  Beshrew  your  heart.  By  God's 
lid.  By  Venus'  hand.  Go  hang  yourself.  God-a-mercy. 
Ha,  ha,  ha.  How  rank  soever.  0,  admirable.  Regard 
him.  Serve  your  turn.  This  is  kindly  done.  To  say  the 
truth.     Welcome,  welcome." 

Next  let  us  consider  the  big  words  in  Troilus  and 
Cressida;  such  as  Jonson,  in  his  Poetaster,  caused  Dekker 
to  be  indicted  for  using.  They  are:  "Attributive,  cir- 
cumvention, commixtion,  conflux,  consanguinity,  co- 
rivaled,  corresponsive,  deracinate,  dividable,  embrasures, 
expressure,  fixture,  fraughtage,  infectiously,  insisture, 
mappery,  medicinable,  monstrosity,  oppugnancy,  primo- 
genitive,  propension,  propugnation,  protractive,  rejoindure, 
taciturnity,  transportance,  uncomprehensive,  unrespective, 
waftage." 

Compare  these  with  the  following  big  words  in  Patient 
Grissel,  a  play  which  was  mainly  written  by  Dekker  and 
Chettle,  and  a  play  in  which  Francis  Bacon  had  no  part: 
"Accoutrements,  capricious,  collocution,  condolement, 
conglutinate,  delinquishment,  dignifying,  diogenical,  dis- 
consolation,  expatiate,  fastidious,  fustian,  gallimaufry, 
gratulate,  incongruent,  magnitude,  misprize,  misprision, 
oblivionize,  outlandish,  penurious,  solitariness,  synthesis." 

Consider  also  the  long  words  heretofore  set  out  in 
Chapter  XXVI,  and  gathered  from  Dekker's  plays. 


TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA  :    TAMING  OF  THE  SHREW.      377 

Words  used  in  Troilus  and  Cressida  and  once  only  in 
the  play,  and  also  used  by  Dekker,  are  as  follows : 

"Blackamoor,  brainless,  inveigled,  lifter,  mealy,  plaguy, 
unclasp,  waftage,  wenching." 

When  Troilus  says  "  Do  not  give  advantage  to  stubborn 
critics,"  Dekker,  in  Knights  Conjuring,  says,  "Take  heed 
of  critics."  When  Pandarus  says,  "and  I  have  a  rheum 
in  mine  eyes  too,"  Dekker,  in  2  H.  W.,  A.  2,  S.  1,  says, 
"I  am  troubled  with  a  whoreson  salt  rheum."  Neither 
Bacon  or  Drayton,  nor  indeed  any  dramatic  poet  of  the 
time,  save  the  creator  of  Simon  Eyre  and  Orlando  Frisco- 
baldo,  could  have  written  in  Troilus  and  Cressida  the 
following : 

"  Now  the  rotten  diseases  of  the  south,  the  guts-griping, 
ruptures,  catarrhs,  loads  o'  gravel  i'  the  back,  lethargies, 
cold  palsies,  raw  eyes,  dirt-rotten  livers,  wheezing  lungs, 
bladders  full  of  imposthume,  sciaticas,  lime  kilns  i'  the 
palm,  incurable  bone-ache,  and  the  rivelled  fee-simple  of 
the  tetter,  take  and  take  again  such  preposterous  dis- 
coveries," or  the  following,  "thou  damnable  box  of  envy 
.  .  .  you  ruinous  butt;  you  whoreson  indistinguishable 
cur  .  .  .  thou  idle  immaterial  skein  of  sleyd  silk,  thou 
green  sarcenet  flap  for  a  sore  eye,  thou  tassel  of  a  prodigal's 
purse,  thou?" 

These  abusive  phrases  are  all  distinctly  Dekkerian. 
Nevertheless,  there  are  marks  of  Bacon  in  this  play, 
plainly  to  be  discovered,  as  if  he  had  taken  the  work  of 
another  or  others  and  incorporated  some  of  his  philosophi- 
cal views  and  reflections  therein.  For  instance,  in  his 
"Advancement  of  Learning,"  Vol.  1,  Edition  of  1803,  page 
139,  referring  to  Aristotle,  he  says,  "And  as  he  elegantly 
expoundeth  the  ancient  fable  of  Atlas  that  stood  fixed  and 


378  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

bore  up  the  heaven  from  falhng,  to  be  meant  of  the  poles 
or  axletrees  of  heaven,  whereupon  the  conversion  is 
accomplished,  so  assuredly  men  have  a  desire  to  have  an 
Atlas  or  axle  tree  within  to  keep  them  from  fluctuation." 
While  Ulysses,  in  Act  1,  Scene  3,  says: 

"  And  such  again  as  venerable  Nestor,  hatched  in  silver 
Should  with  a  bond  of  air  (strong  as  the  axle  tree 
On  which  heaven  rides)  knit  all  the  Greekish  ears 
To  his  experienced  tongue." 

And  again  in  Act  2,  Scene  2,  Hector  says,  "So  madly 
hot  that  no  discourse  of  reason";  while  Bacon,  in  Vol. 
1,  p.  26,  says,  ''Martin  Luther,  conducted  no  doubt  by 
an  higher  providence  but  in  discourse  of  reason. ^^  It  will 
be  noticed  by  the  reader  that  the  same  expression  occurs 
in  Hamlet,  A.  1,  S.  2,  L.  150. 

But  it  is  especially  in  the  frequency  of  the  similes  in 
the  play  that  the  reader  will  find  Bacon's  handiwork. 
I  will  set  them  out  for  the  reader's  benefit: 

"As  true  as  steel;  as  plantage  to  the  moon;  as  sun  to 
day;  as  turtle  to  her  mate;  as  iron  to  adamant;  as  earth 
to  the  center;  as  true  as  Troilus;  as  false  as  air;  as  water; 
as  wind;  as  sandy  earth;  as  fox  to  lamb;  as  wolf  to  heifer 
calf;  as  stepdame  to  her  son;  as  false  as  Cressid;  as  a 
prophet;  as  knots;  as  bending  angels;  as  be  stars  in 
heaven;  as  the  wind;  as  the  axle  tree;  as  banks  of  Lybia; 
as  truth's  simplicity;  as  tediously  as  hell;  like  Perseus' 
horse;  like  the  commandment;  like  a  strutting  player; 
like  a  chime  a-mending;  like  as  Vulcan;  like  a  mint;  like 
merchants;  like  chidden  Mercury;  like  a  star  disorbed; 
like  one  besotted;  like  fair  fruit  in  an  unwholesome  dish; 
like  an  engine  not  portable ;  like  a  bourne,  a  pale,  a  shore : 


■  TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA :   TAMING  OF  THE  SHREW.      379 

like  a  strange  soul;  like  vassalage;  like  unbridled  children; 
like  a  fountain  stirred;  like  a  puling  cuckold;  like  a  lecher; 
like  a  book  of  sport;  like  a  peacock;  like  an  hostess;  like 
a  leather  jerkin;  like  butterflies;  like  an  arch;  like  a  gate 
of  steel;  like  a  rusty  nail;  like  an  entered  tide;  like  a 
gallant  horse;  like  a  fashionable  host;  hke  the  gods;  like 
a  dew  drop;  like  an  ague;  unlike  young  men." 

I  can  not  give  adhesion  to  the  view  expressed  by  Webb 
and  other  gifted  writers  that  Bacon  wrote  this  play.  It 
was,  in  my  opinion,  based  upon  the  foregoing  facts,  origin- 
ally the  production  of  Dekker  and  Chettle,  added  to  and 
philosophically  dressed  by  Francis  Bacon.  How  he  got 
the  play,  or  from  whom  or  from  what  source  he  obtained 
it,  is  not  very  essential  except  in  corroboration  of  the 
theory  that  he  made  additions  to  it.  The  natural  pre- 
sumption is  that  the  original  authors,  after  being  paid 
for  it,  had  no  further  care  for  nor  proprietorship  in  it; 
that  it  passed  into  the  possession  and  ownership  of  William 
Shaksper,  and  as  such  owner  he  got  credit  for  the  original 
authorship  of  Dekker  and  Chettle  as  well  as  Bacon's 
amendments  and  additions. 

The  Taming  of  the  Shrew. 

"\^Tien  the  reader's  attention  is  drawn  to  the  question 
of  the  origin  of  the  play  of  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew,  he 
will  find  by  an  examination  of  Henslowe's  Diary,  at  page 
36,  the  following  entry: 

''11  of  June,  1594.  Rd  at  the  Tamynge  of  a  Shrowe 
IX  s." 

The  editor  of  the  Diary,  Collier,  in  a  note  adds  the 
following:  "No  doubt  the  old  Taming  of  a  Shrew, 
printed  in   1594,   and  recently  reprinted  by  the  Shake- 


380  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

speare  Society  under  the  care  of  Mr.  Amyot,  from  the  sole 
existing  copy  in  the  library  of  the  Duke  of  Devonshire." 

It  is  also  to  be  noted  that  this  performance  of  June 
eleventh  was  the  only  performance  of  that  particular  play 
in  Henslowe's  theatre,  which  fact,  added  to  the  other  fact 
of  the  mention  of  the  paltry  sum  of  nine  shillings  by  way 
of  receipts,  shows  that  the  play  of  the  Taming  of  a  Shrew, 
as  printed  in  1594,  did  not  please  the  theatre-goers. 

A  perusal  of  the  play  as  printed  by  the  Shakespeare 
Society  also  shows  that  it  was  a  very  hastily  written 
production. 

In  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew,  printed  in  the  Folio  of  1623, 
the  characters  of  the  play  are  changed,  and  the  place  is 
also  changed  from  Athens  to  Padua.  But  the  Induc- 
tion is  retained,  amplified  and  beautified,  and  the  play 
itself  is  very  entertaining  and  mirth-provoking. 

A  few  short  extracts  from  the  old  play  will  give  the 
reader  an  insight  into  the  method  of  the  revision.  In  the 
play  of  1594  the  Induction  opens  thus: 

"  Enter  a  Tapster,  beating  out  of  doors  She,  drunken. 

Tap.  You  whoreson  drunken  slave,  you  had  best  be  gone 
And  empty  your  drunken  paunch  somewhere  else. 
For  in  this  house  thou  shalt  not  rest  to-night. 

Slie.     Tilly  vally  by  crise,  Tapster  I'll  fese  you  anon, 
I  do  drink  of  my  own  instigation. 
Here  I'll  be  a  while.     "Why,  Tapster,  I  say, 
Till's  a  fresh  cushen  here, 
Heigho,  here's  good  warm  lying." 

Let  him  also  compare  the  following  with  the  revision 
of  it  in  Act  2,  Scene  1. 

"  Alf.   Ha,  Kate,  come  hither,  wench,  and  list  to  me. 
Use  this  gentleman  friendly  as  thou  canst. 


TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA :   TAMING  OF  THE  SHREW.      381 

Fer.     Twenty  good  morrows  to  my  lovely  Kate. 
Kate.    You  jest,  I  am  sure;  is  she  yours  already? 
Fer.      I  tell  thee  Kate.     I  know  thou  lov'st  me  well. 
Kate.    The  devil  you  do.     ^\Tio  told  you  so? 
Fer.      My  mind,  sweet  Kate,  doth  say  I  am  the  man, 

Must  wed  and  bed  and  marry  bonny  Kate. 
Kate.    Was  ever  seen  so  gross  an  ass  as  this? 
Fer.      Ay,  to  stand  so  long  and  never  get  a  kiss. 
Kate.    Hands  off  I  say,  and  get  you  from  this  place, 

Or  I  will  set  my  ten  commandments  in  your  face." 

Alf.  abbreviated  from  Alfonso  is  the  Baptista  of  the 
revised  play.  Fer.  standing  for  Ferando  is  altered  to 
Petruchio,  and  the  Christian  names  of  the  other  two 
daughters  are  changed.  The  reader  who  will  take  the 
trouble  to  make  the  comparison  which  I  suggest,  will 
agree  with  me  that  the  reviser  of  the  play  greatly  im- 
proved and  beautified  it,  and  especially  the  Induction. 
He  certainly  was  a  skillful  word-painter. 

Henslowe's  Diary  throws  light  on  the  composition  and 
authorship  of  the  play,  as  will  appear  by  the  following 
entries:  At  page  224,  "Lent  unto  Thomas  Downton  and 
Edward  Jeube,  to  geve  imto  Thomas  Dickers,  in  earneste 
of  a  comody  called  a  medyson  for  a  curste  wiffe  19  July 
1602,  forty  shillinges."  At  page  225,  "Lent  unto  Thomas 
Downton,  the  31  of  July  1602,  to  paye  unto  Thomas 
Dickers,  in  pte  of  payment  of  his  comodey  called  a  medyson 
for  a  curste  wiffe  the  some  of  forty  shillings." 

Collier  appends  the  following  note  to  this  entry :  "  This 
'  medicine  for  a  curst  wife '  was  probably  some  new  version 
of  the  Taming  of  a  Shrew  which  preceded  Shakespeare's 
comedy,  and  which  has  been  reprinted  by  the  Shakespeare 
Society  from  the  unique  copy  of  1594  in  the  library  of  the 
Duke  of  Devonshire." 


382  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

At  page  237,  "Layd  out  more  for  the  company,  in  pte 
of  paymente  for  a  booke  called  'Medsen  for  a  ciirste  wife,' 
the  some  of —  mito  Thomas  Deckers,  ten  shillings." 

At  page  238,  "  Pd  at  the  apoyntment  of  the  Compan}'-, 
the  1  of  Septmbr,  in  pte  of  paymente  for  a  comodey 
called  'a  medysen  for  a  curste  wiffe'  to  Thomas  Deckers 
some  of  thirty  shillings." 

Collier's  note  appended  to  this  entry  is  as  follows: 
"This  sum  of  30s.  with  the  £4  in  the  preceding  entry, 
£2  on  31st  of  July  and  10s.  which  Dekker  received  on  the 
27th  August,  made  up  the  sum  total  of  £8  for  the  play 
of  '  A  Medicine  for  a  curst  wife.' "  On  the  27th  of  Septem- 
ber, Dekker  was  paid  10s.  over  and  above  his  price  for  the 
"Medicine  for  a  curst  wife,"  owing  perhaps  to  its  great 
success  W'hen  acted. 

The  entry  to  which  Collier  refers  appears  on  page  240  of 
the  Diary  and  reads  thus : "  Pd  unto  Thomas  Deckers,  the 
27  of  Septmbr  1602  over  and  above  his  price  of  his  boocke 
called  a  Medysen  for  a  curste  wiffe  some  of  ten  shillings." 

It  appears  therefore  that  Dekker  not  only  received 
from  the  hard-fisted  Henslowe  a  good  price  for  his  clever 
comedy,  but  he  opened  his  purse-strings  to  the  amount  of 
ten  shillings  more  as  a  gift  to  Dekker  in  consequence  of 
the  great  success  of  the  play. 

Is  Collier  right  in  his  opinion  that  this  was  a  version  of 
the  old  Taming  of  a  Shrew,  and  am  I  right  in  asking  the 
reader  to  believe  with  me  that  this  costly  comedy  of 
Dekker's  was  the  comedy  which  appeared  in  the  Folio  of 
1623  as  a  Shakespeare  play,  revised  and  amended,  how- 
ever, by  another  hand? 

I  support  my  belief  that  Dekker's  "Medicine  for  a 
curst  wife"  is  the  "Taming  of  the  Shrew,"  as  found  wdth 


TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA :   TAMING  OF  THE  SHREW.     383 

amendments    and    additions    in    the    Shakespeare    plays, 
for  the  following  reasons: 

The  ejaculations,  familiar  expressions  and  phrases  are 
such  as  Dekker  habitually  used,  and  they  are  not  found, 
at  least  to  any  extent,  in  the  writings  of  other  dramatists 
of  that  era. 

The  ejaculations  are  as  follows:  ''A  vengeance  on; 
aye,  prithee,  Fie,  fie,  Gramercies;  God-a-mercy;  0,  pardon 
me;  0,  this  woodcock;  Tush,  tush." 

The  phrases  are  as  follows :  "A  meacock  wretch;  Belike 
(twice  used);  By  this  light;  Get  you  hence  (twice  used); 
God  give  him  joy;  God  send  you  joy;  Here's  no  knavery; 
I  am  undone ;  I  charge  you  in  the  Duke's  name ;  imprimis 
(twice  used);  In  brief  (twice  used);  Lead  apes  in  hell; 
Nay,  I  have  ta'en  you  napping;  Of  his  signs  and  tokens; 
Old  worshipful;  Old  master;  Pitchers  have  ears;  Resolve 
me  that;  Take  heed;  'Tis  passing  good;  A\Tiere  be  these 
knaves." 

The  words  used  only  once  in  the  plays  and  also  used 
by  Dekker  are,  "  coney-catched,  logger-headed,  o'erreach, 
metaphysics,  mother-wit." 

All  these  ejaculations,  expressions,  and  words  are 
found  in  Fortunatus,  Satiro-mastix,  The  Shoemakers' 
Holiday,  and  the  Honest  ^Vhore. 

A  most  remarkable  phrase  of  identification  is  found  in 
the  first  act  and  first  scene.  Dekker  was  fond  of  using 
Latin  sentences,  and  he  aired  his  Latin  in  his  prose  and 
poetry  whenever  he  could  get  an  opportunity.  In  his 
Belman's  Night  Walk  he  quoted  the  following  from  the 
Eunuch  of  Terence,  "  Redime  te  captum  qiiam  queas  minimo" 
and  so  to  make  a  rhyme,  he  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Tranio, 
in  the  Shakespeare  play,  Act  1,  Scene  1,  the  following: 


384  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

"  If  love  have  touched  you,  nought  remains  but  so, 
Redime  te  captum  quam  queas  minimo." 

Dekker  can  also  be  traced  in  the  Induction.  "  Paucas 
pallabris"  was  a  favorite  expression  of  his.  See  the 
Roaring  Girl,  Act  5,  Scene  1.  "Go  by,  says  Jeronimo," 
he  was  fond  of  quoting.  ''I'U  not  budge  an  inch,  boy" 
is  repeated  in  the  Honest  Whore;  and  the  expression, 
"But  I  would  be  loth"  is  also  used  by  Dekker  in  Act  2, 
Scene  2,  of  Fortunatus. 

The  style  of  the  writer  is  the  style  of  Dekker.  Take 
for  instance  the  first  words  of  Grumio,  in  the  hall  in 
Petruchio's  Country-house  as  set  out  in  Scene  1  of  Act  4 : 

"Gru. — Fie,  fie,  on  all  tired  jades,  on  all  mad  masters, 
and  all  foul  ways!  Was  ever  man  so  beaten?  was  ever 
man  so  rayed?  was  ever  man  so  weary?  I  am  sent  before 
to  make  a  fire,  and  they  are  coming  after  to  warm  them. 
Now,  were  not  I  a  little  pot,  and  soon  hot,  m}^  very  lips 
might  freeze  to  my  teeth,  my  tongue  to  the  roof  of  my 
mouth,  my  heart  in  my  belly,  ere  I  should  come  to  a  fire 
to  thaw  me;  but,  I,  with  blowing  the  fire,  shall  warm 
myself,  for,  considering  the  weather,  a  taller  man  than  I 
will  take  cold.     Holla,  hoa!  Curtis!" 

There  are  in  the  play  of  Patient  Grissel,  written  by 
Dekker,  Chettle,  and  Haughton,  several  allusions  to  the 
taming  of  shrews.     I  cite  one. 

In  Act  5,  Scene  2,  Sir  Onan,  producing  his  wards, 
says  to  the  Marquess  '  'I  will  learn  your  medicines  to  tame 
shrews."  This  play  was  printed  in  1603,  and  the  expres- 
sion is  remarkable  because  Henslowe's  Diary  shows,  as 
heretofore  set  out,  that  Dekker  in  the  summer  of  1602 
received  money  from  Henslowe  on  account  of  the  comedy 


TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA :   TAMING  OF  THE  SHREW.      385 

he  was  writing,  called  by  the  illiterate  manager  "  A  medi- 
cine for  a  curst  wife." 

While  Dekker  should  have  credit  for  the  composition 
of  the  major  part  of  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew,  I  can 
not  help  thinking  that  the  man  who  wrote  the  Venus 
and  Adonis  amended  the  Induction  to  this  play  and 
smoothed*  the  rough  portions  of  it.  Dekker  was  a 
hasty  and  careless  writer,  and  every  reader  of  his  works 
will  agree  with  me  that  he  was  always  in  need  of  a  literary 
polisher. 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 

MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE,  TITUS  ANDRONICUS,  AND  PERICLES 

EXAMINED. 

"Opinion's  hut  a  fool." 

— Pericles,  ii,  2. 

How  can  the  literary  public  make  some  reparation  to 
the  poet  and  dramatist  of  Lincolnshire,  the  sturdy  and 
amiable  Thomas  Heywood,  who  wrote  or  had  "a  main 
finger"  in  the  writing  of  over  two  hundred  and  twenty 
plays,  many  of  which  were  stolen  from  him  without  any 
recognition  of  his  authorship  by  the  printers  and  pub- 
lishers who  flourished  in  those  days?  I  know  that  the 
reader  will  be  pleased  if  the  author  of  "  A  Woman  Killed 
by  Kindness"  can  be  truthfully  connected  with  the  com- 
position of  part  or  all  of  any  one  or  more  of  the  Shake- 
speare plays. 

Henslowe's  Diary  shows,  at  page  230,  the  following 
entry : 

"Ld  owt  at  the  apoyntment  of  Thomas  Hewode,  in 
earnest  of  a  play  called  Like  quits  Like  unto  Mr.  Harey 
Chettell  and  thomas  Hewode,  the  14  of  Janewary  1602 
some  xxxx  s."  It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  in  1602 
Heywood  and  Chettle  wrote  a  play  for  Henslowe's  Com- 
pany which  Henslowe  called  "Like  quits  Like." 

In  Act  5,  Scene  1,  of  Measure  for  Measure,  the  play  now 
under  consideration,  the  following  words  are  uttered  by 
the  Duke: 


MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE :    ANDRONICUS:    PERICLES.     387 

"The  very  mercy  of  the  law  cries  out 
Most  audibly  even  from  his  proper  tongue, 
An  Angelo  for  Claudio,  death  for  death; 
Haste  still  pays  haste  and  leisure  answers  leisure, 
Like  doth  quit  like  and  measure  still  for  measure." 

I  am  quite  sure  that  the  unprejudiced  reader  will  agree 
with  me  that  the  play  which  Henslowe's  entry  referred 
to  was  this  very  play  of  Measure  for  Measure,  now  wrongly 
accredited  to  Shaksper.  It  may  have  been  changed  or 
amended  afterward,  but  presumptively  it  was  the  same 
play.  When  Collier,  who  edited  Henslowe's  Diary,  came 
across  this  entry,  he  brushed  it  aside  with  his  probabilities 
and  possibilities  by  the  following  note  appended  to  page 
230  of  the  Diary:  "It  is  just  possible  that  this  may  have 
been  a  play  on  the  same  story  as  Measure  for  Measure, 
near  the  end  of  which  this  line  occurs:  'Like  doth  quit 
like,  and  measure  still  for  measure.'  The  success  of 
Measure  for  Measure  at  this  date  might  have  produced 
the  rival  play.  As  has  often  been  the  case,  the  title  of 
the  piece  was  clumsily  filled  in  by  Henslowe  after  he  made 
the  entry." 

But  presumptively  the  entry,  which  is  unquestionably 
a  correct  statement  of  the  original  authorship  of  the  play 
of  Measure  for  Measure,  shows  that  Thomas  Heywood  and 
Henry  Chettle  wrote  the  play. 

Although  it  differs,  as  Verplanck  says,  and  as  all  com- 
mentators admit,  in  a  marked  manner  in  diction,  versifi- 
cation and  still  more  in  general  spirit  and  tone  of  senti- 
ment from  the  other  Shakespeare  comedies,  neither  that 
fact  nor  the  Henslowe  entry  are  sufficient  to  put  the 
Shaksper  worshipers  on  inquiry.  They  do  not  care  to 
doubt.     Nothing  can  shake  their  idolatrous  belief. 


388  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

If  the  reader,  for  illustration,  will  turn  to  Isabella's 
words  in  Act  2,  Scene  2,  he  will  see  at  once  the  difference 
in  style: 

"Nothing  but  thunder.     Merciful  heaven! 
That  rather  with  thy  sharp  and  sulphurous  bolt 
Splits' t  the  unwedgeable  and  gnarled  oak. 
Than  the  soft  myrtle;  but  man,  proud  man." 

The  syllable  is  wanting  in  the  middle,  as  the  reader 
will  notice. 

Let  the  reader  also  notice  the  date  of  this  payment  of 
earnest  money  to  Heywood  and  Chettle.  It  is  January 
14,  1602,  and  it  is  certain  from  a  memorandum  made  by 
the  master  of  the  revels  that  Measure  for  Measure  was 
acted  at  Court  in  December,  1604. 

As  to  the  competency  of  Heywood  and  Chettle  to  write 
a  good  play,  the  evidence  is  overwhelming.  Charles 
Lamb  calls  Heywood  the  "prose  Shakespeare,"  and  says 
of  him,  "  His  scenes  are  to  the  full  as  natural  and  affecting. 
Generosity,  courtesy,  temperance  in  the  depths  of  passion ; 
sweetness,  in  a  word,  and  gentleness,  Christianism,  and 
true  hearty  anglicism  of  feelings,  shaping  that  Christian- 
ism, shine  through  his  beautiful  writings  in  a  manner  more 
conspicuous  than  in  those  of  Shakespeare." 

And  as  to  Chettle,  Meres,  in  his  "Palladis  Tamia, " 
published  in  1598,  mentions  him  as  "  one  of  the  best  for 
comedy."  But  the  finest  tribute  to  him  was  paid  by 
Dekker  after  Chettle's  death,  in  his  Knights  Conjurmg. 
In  describing  the  other  world  to  which  we  enter  after  death, 
Dekker  pictures  a  grove  in  the  fields  of  Joy,  standing  by 
itself  like  an  island,  called  the  Grove  of  Bay  Trees  "  to 
which  resort  none  but  the  children  of  Phoebus  (poets  and 


MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE:   ANDRONICUS:   PERICLES.    389 

musicians).  In  one  part  of  which  grove,  old  Chaucer, 
revered  for  priority,  bhthe  in  cheer,  buxom  in  speech  and 
benign  in  his  behavior,  is  circled  round  ^\ith  all  the  makers 
of  poen^s  of  his  time. 

"In  another  company  sat  learned  Watson,  industrious 
Kyd,  ingenious  Aitchlow  and  (though  he  had  been  a  player 
moulded  out  of  their  pens)  yet  because  he  had  been  their 
lover  and  a  register  to  the  muses,  inimitable  Bentley; 
these  were  likewise  carousing  to  one  another  at  the  holy 
well,  some  of  them  singing  paeans  to  Apollo,  some  of  them 
hymns  to  the  rest  of  the  gods,  whilst  Marlowe,  Greene, 
and  Peele  had  got  under  the  shade  of  a  large  vine,  laughing 
to  see  Nash  (that  was  newly  come  to  their  college)  still 
haunted  with  the  sharp  and  satirical  spirit  that  followed 
him  here  on  earth."  Then  after  describing  a  bitter  speech 
of  Nash,  delivered  to  the  assembled  poet  ghosts,  he  adds — 
"He  had  no  sooner  spoken  this,  but  in  comes  Chettle 
sweating  and  blowing  by  reason  of  his  fatness,  to  welcome 
whom,  because  he  was  of  old  acquaintance,  all  rose  up  and 
fell  presently  on  their  knees  to  drink  a  health  to  all  the 
lovers  of  Helicon." 

And  here  I  must  make  a  short  digression.  After  a 
perusal  of  the  "  Shaksper  not  Shakespeare ' '  of  Edwards, 
and  especially  that  part  bearing  on  Shaksper's  ignorance,  a 
witty  and  very  accomplished  woman  exclaimed,  "If  this 
be  true,  if  Shaksper  was  an  ignorant  fellow,  and  if  the 
spirits  of  the  departed  hold  intercourse  with  each  other 
in  the  next  world,  how  amazed  and  crestfallen  will  the 
believers  in  Shaksper  as  Shakespeare  appear  when  they 
meet  him  on  the  other  side."  That  felicitous  remark 
naturally  furnishes  the  material  for  a  supplemental  Dek- 
ker's  dream. 


390  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

If  Dekker  could  return  from  the  abodes  of  the  dead, 
and  mdulge  in  a  supplemental  dream,  the  incident  pictured 
to  his  imagination  might  have  for  its  time  one  of  the 
early  years  of  the  twentieth  century  and  for  its  place  the 
very  same  paradisaical  grove  in  the  field  of  Joy,  so  like 
an  island,  which  was  frequented  by  the  poets  and  drama- 
tists mentioned  by  Dekker.  The  particular  spot  is  a 
secluded  one,  set  apart  for  the  use  and  pleasure  of  the 
Shakespearean  critics  and  commentators.  A  notable 
group  is  gathered  there.  Among  them  may  be  seen  the 
spiritual  form  of  Edmond  ]\Ialone,  the  indefatigable,  pre- 
cise, and  learned  searcher  after  facts  as  to  Shakespeare. 
Near  to  him  stands  Richard  Farmer,  that  doughty  and 
terrible  foe  of  those  who  claim  that  ''the  sweet  swan  of 
Avon"  was  an  educated  and  accomplished  scholar;  while 
close  by  his  side  is  the  critical  and  studious  Richard 
Grant  White,  who  was  endeavoring  to  convince  Farmer 
that  the  gentle  Shaksper  was  a  thorough  scholar,  versed 
in  all  the  learning  of  the  ancients,  familiar  with  the  Greek, 
Latin,  and  modern  languages,  as  well  as  a  complete  master 
of  the  Aristotelian  and  Baconian  systems  of  philosophy. 
Just  as  he  had  finished  his  eloquent  speech,  up  came 
Gulien  C.  Verplanck,  the  accomplished  and  fair-minded 
editor  and  Shakespearean  critic,  and  suggested  that,  to 
put  an  end  to  controversy,  it  would  be  a  comparatively 
easy  matter  to  send  a  message  to  the  planetary  sphere 
which  the  great  bard  inhabited  and  solicit  him  to  honor 
them  with  his  presence  and  to  permit  them  to  gaze  upon 
that  face  which  rare  Ben  Jonson  referred  to  in  his  address 
to  the  reader  in  the  Folio,  when  he  said, 

"  Oh,  could  he  but  have  drawn  his  wit 
As  well  in  brass,  as  he  hath  hit 
His  face." 


MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE :   ANDRONICUS :   PERICLES.    391 

White's  proposition  secured  unanimous  assent  and 
thereupon  a  messenger  was  summoned  and  the  request 
announced  to  him.  The  messenger  proved  to  be  Richard 
Brome,  whilom  a  servant  to  Jonson  and  a  protege  and 
admirer  of  Dekker,  the  dreamer.  Very  soon  he  reappeared 
with  the  Wilham  Shaksper  of  Stratford-on-Avon.  When 
Shaksper  came  before  the  commentators,  Malone,  who 
was  delegated  by  the  assembly  to  welcome  him  (first 
making  a  low  obeisance)  addressed  him  thus:  ''All  hail, 
thou  prince  of  poets;  thou  paragon  of  philosophers;  thou 
divinely  inspired  dramatist;  thou  Warwickshire  warbler 
of  native  wood-notes  wild;  thou  William  the  Conqueror 
who  came  in  before  Richard  the  Third;  thou  myriad- 
minded,  gigantic  or  rather  mastodonic  prodigy  of  intellect; 
thou  Nestor  in  judgment;  thou  Socrates  in  philosophical 
genius;  thou  Ovid  in  the  poetry  of  love;  thou — thou — " 

At  this  point,  the  eulogistic  Malone  was  rudely  inter- 
rupted by  the  shade  of  William  of  Stratford,  who  petu- 
lantly exclaimed,  "  Stop  that  thouing,  Mr.  Malone,  it  is  as 
unwelcome  as  Coke's  fling  at  Raleigh,  and  very  untruthful. 
You  are  all  of  you  on  the  wrong  scent.  Ben  Jonson  has 
made  fools  of  all  of  you,  and  indeed  of  the  whole  literary 
world  as  well.  It  was  not  my  fault.  I  never  claimed  to 
be  a  poet  or  a  playwriter.  I  am  more  sinned  against 
than  sinning.  I  never  boasted  or  swaggered  about  author- 
ship. Like  Mrs.  Quickly,  I  do  not  love  swaggering.  I  can 
not  abide  swaggerers.  I  never  put  my  name  to  any  book 
or  pamphlet.  I  am  not  accountable  for  the  poetical  stuff, 
good,  bad,  or  indifferent,  which  publishers  and  others 
have  fathered  upon  me.  I  did  not  even  have  the  talent  to 
write  the  doggerel  which  tradition  has  credited  me  with — 
not  even  the  epitaph  upon   the  miserly  John  a  Comber. 


392  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Of  course,  I  can  not  help  laughing  occasionally  at  you, 
most  learned  shades,  for  being  so  easily  humbugged;  but 
that  was  the  way  of  the  world,  especially  in  the  publishers' 
line,  in  my  lifetime,  and  I  presume  the  people  are  about 
the  same  now  as  they  were  then.  They  have  always 
liked  to  be  humbugged.  I  bid  you  all  adieu."  As  he 
started  off.  White,  turning  to  his  astounded  and  dis- 
appointed associates,  said,  "You  know  that  I  always  said 
that  that  man  Shaksper's  words  have  never  reached  us, 
and  not  a  familiar  line  from  his  hand  or  the  record  of  one 
interview  at  which  he  was  present,  and  you  all  know  that 
in  the  earth-world  I  always  had  doubts  about  his  ability 
to  write  the  plays."  But  White's  words  were  drowned 
and  lost  in  the  thundering  cry  of  Malone  as  he  shouted 
after  the  retreating  Shaksper,  "Away  with  you,  you 
mould)^  rogue,  you  bottle-ale  rascal,  you  basket-hilt  stale 
juggler;  away,  I  say,  you  scullion,  you  rampallian,  you 
fustilarian;  I'll  tickle  your  Catastrophe  for  you!" 

Returning  to  Chettle,  he  who  will  examine  the  play  of 
Patient  Grissel  and  compare  Chettle's  rendering  of  the 
part  of  Babulo  therein  with  the  comic  parts  of  Measure 
for  Measure,  will  recognize  at  once  the  style  and  manner 
of  Chettle  in  that  part  of  Measure  for  Measure. 

Nevertheless,  although  Heywood  and  Chettle  undoubt- 
edly originated  in  1602  the  play  of  Measure  for  Measure, 
yet  there  are  portions  of  it  which  neither  of  them  could 
have  composed,  as,  for  instance,  the  beautiful  philosophical 
principles  and  precepts  with  which  this  play  abounds. 
Neither  Heywood  or  Chettle  could  have  written  the 
dialogue  in  Act  2,  Scene  2,  between  Angelo  and  Isabella, 
in  which  the  latter  pleads  for  her  brother's  life;  or  the 
commentary  of  the  Duke  upon  life  in  Scene  1  of  Act  3, 


MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE :   ANDRONICUS:   PERICLES.    393 

or  the  conversation  between  Claudio  and  Isabella  in  the 
same  scene. 

They  seem  to  me  to  be  in  the  Baconian  vein,  and  when 
in  Act  5,  Scene  1,  I  read  these  words  of  Isabella, 

"For  Angelo, 
His  act  did  not  overtake  his  bad  intent 
And  must  be  buried  but  as  an  intent 
That  perished  by  the  way;  thoughts  are  no  subjects; 
Intents  but  merely  thoughts." 

I  am  reminded  of  what  Bacon  wrote,  as  set  out  in  the 
Hermit's  speech: 

"Whether  he  believes  me  or  no,  there  is  no  prison  to 
the  thoughts,  which  are  free  under  the  greatest  tyrants." 

My  opinion,  founded  upon  the  facts  hereinbefore 
recited,  would  be  that  Francis  Bacon  took  the  original 
play  of  Measure  for  Measure  and  dressed  and  beautified 
it  with  his  views  upon  life,  death,  justice,  and  mercy. 
I  think  so  because  no  other  poet  of  the  time  could  have  so 
revised,  amended,  and  embellished  the  play.  It  probably 
came  hastily,  roughly,  and  crudely  in  the  first  instance 
from  the  hands  of  Heywood  and  Chettle,  who  certainly 
earned  their  forty  shillings  for  its  production.  If  it  did 
not,  and  if  it  came  from  them  as  it  afterward  appeared  in 
the  Folio  of  1623,  then  the  fair  and  clear  presumption  is 
that  they,  Heywood  and  Chettle,  are  entitled  to  the  full 
credit  for  it.  But  if  it  did  start  from  them  in  a  crude 
state,  it  was  probably  revised  and  dressed  for  the  enter- 
tainment of  the  Court  between  1602  and  1604,  and  if 
Bacon  was  the  reviser  and  beautifier,  he  did  so  as  a  con- 
cealed poet  and  in  the  name  of  Shakespeare.  Of  course 
my  opinion  may  be  erroneous  as  to  the  reviser,  and  some 


394  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

other  poet  of  that  era  may  have  executed  the  revision, 

and  I  may  have  erred  in  my  selection.     If  I  have,  then 

Michael  Drayton  should  be  pointed  to  as  the  one  next  to 

Bacon  most  capable  of  such  revision. 

There  is  one  expression  of  the  Duke  in  the  first  scene  of 

Act  1,  which  would  indicate  that  the  words  were  used  for 

the  purpose  of  pleasing  King  James.     The  Duke  is  made 

to  say — 

"I  love  the  people, 
But  do  not  like  to  stage  me  to  their  eyes. 
Though  it  do  well,  I  do  not  relish  well 
Their  loud  applause  and  aves  vehement." 

Whoever  wrote  this  must  have  been  familiar  with  the 
King's  dislike  for  the  crowding  of  the  multitude  about 
him.  A  shrewd  courtier,  if  he  had  an  opportunity  to 
revise  the  original  play,  would  have  been  quick  to  insert 
such  a  passage  in  the  play.  Phillips,  at  page  214,  Vol.  1 
of  the  "Outlines,"  speaking  of  the  King's  players,  says: 
"The  company  are  found  playing  at  Oxford  in  the  early 
part  of  the  summer  of  1604.  In  the  Christmas  holidays 
of  the  same  year,  on  the  evening  of  December  26th,  the 
comedy  of  Measure  for  Measure  was  performed  before  the 
Court  at  Wliitehall,  and  if  it  were  wTitten  for  that  special 
purpose,  it  seems  probable  that  the  lines,  those  in  which 
Angelo  (he  means  Vincentio,  the  Duke)  deprecates  the 
thronging  of  the  multitudes  to  royalty,  were  introduced 
out  of  special  consideration  to  James  the  First,  who,  as  is 
well  known,  had  a  great  dislike  to  encountering  great 
crowds  of  people.  The  lines  in  the  mouth  of  Angelo 
appear  to  be  somewhat  forced,  while  the  metrical  disposi- 
tion is  consistent  with  the  idea  that  they  might  have  been 
the  result  of  an  after- thought." 


MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE :   ANDRONICUS :   PERICLES.    395 

The  opinion  herein  expressed  that  Francis  Bacon 
revised  and  embellished  Measure  for  Measure  is  strength- 
ened by  the  singular  and  much-quoted  sentence  found  in 
the  letter  of  Sir  Tobie  Matthew  addressed  to  his  patron 
and  benefactor,  Bacon,  wherein  he  says,  ''  I  will  not  return 
you  weight  for  weight,  but  measure  for  measure." 

Among  the  plays  in  the  First  Folio,  Titus  Andronicus 
was  inserted.  Although  printed  several  times  previously, 
it  had  never  been  claimed  by  nor  credited  to  Shaksper. 
It  was  first  printed  in  1594  and  then  in  1600,  and  again  in 
1611,  and  it  was  acted  in  Henslowe's  theatre  (where 
Shaksper  did  not  play)  as  early  as  January  23,  1593-4. 
There  is,  therefore,  nothing  to  connect  Shaksper  with  the 
authorship  of  this  play  except  the  unreliable  statement 
of  Meres  and  the  fact  that  it  is  incorporated  in  the  First 
Folio. 

Who  reads  Titus  Andronicus,  or  who  cares  to  read  it? 
Where  is  the  enthusiastic  commentator  who  will  go  into 
raptures  over  it,  as  Schlegel  did  over  Sir  John  Oldcastle? 
Where  is  the  lecturer  who  will  dilate  before  admiring 
audiences  upon  the  beauties  of  the  play  or  the  philosophy 
which  it  teaches?  What  Shakespeare  Club  directs  its 
members  to  delineate  the  virtues  or  the  faults  of  its  heroes 
and  heroines?  What  actor  or  theatrical  manager  brings 
it  upon  the  stage?  Reader,  have  you  ever  waded  through 
those  columns  of  horrors  upon  horrors  multiplied  which 
.abound  in  the  play  of  Titus  Andronicus?  If  you  have 
not,  try  to  read  it  and  compare  it  with  the  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream  or  As  You  Like  It  or  Twelfth  Night.  Let 
me  feast  you  upon  its  horrors.  In  the  second  scene  of 
the  very  first  act,  the  limbs  of  Alarbus,  the  captive  son  of 
Tamora,  the  queen  of  the  Goths,  are  lopped  off  and  his 


396  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

entrails  used  to  feed  the  sacrificing  fire.  A  Uttle  farther 
on  in  the  same  scene,  Titus  Andronicus  murders  Martius, 
his  own  son.  In  the  third  scene  of  the  second  act,  Bassa- 
nius  is  stabbed  and  murdered  in  the  forest,  his  body 
thrust  into  a  pit,  and  Lavinia,  his  wife,  is  dragged  off  and 
ravished.  In  the  next  scene  of  the  same  act,  Martius  and 
Quintus,  sons  of  Andronicus,  are  lured  into  the  same  pit 
and  left  to  perish ;  while  in  the  fifth  scene  of  the  same  act, 
Lavinia's  hands  are  hacked  off  and  her  tongue  is  cut  out. 
Act  three,  in  the  first  scene,  minutely  details  the  cutting 
off  with  an  axe  of  the  hand  of  Titus  by  Aaron,  the  Moor; 
and  when  that  is  accomplished,  the  heads  of  his  two  sons, 
Martius  and  Quintus,  and  his  own  mangled  hand  are  pre- 
sented to  him.  The  catalogue  of  crime  is  not  yet  ended, 
for  in  the  second  scene  of  the  fourth  act,  the  nurse  who 
attended  on  Tamora  is  stabbed  and  killed.  In  the  third 
scene,  Titus  becomes  violently  insane,  and  in  the  fourth 
scene,  a  clown  is  hanged.  To  continue  the  chapter  of 
murders,  mayhem,  and  rape,  the  fifth  act  provides  for  the 
cutting  of  Chiron's  throat  by  Titus,  and  then  for  the 
deliberate  murder  of  Chiron's  brother  Demetrius  by  throat- 
cutting.  Titus  then  causes  the  bones  of  the  two  villains, 
so  murdered,  to  be  ground  to  powder,  and  the  powdered 
mass  to  be  mixed  with  their  blood  into  a  paste.  The 
blood  of  the  two  victims  is  saved  for  this  purpose  by  the 
tongueless  and  handless  Lavinia,  and  the  pasty  compound 
is  baked  into  a  pie.  As  soon  as  this  palatable  pie  is  pre- 
pared for  use,  Titus  murders  Lavinia  and  induces  Queen 
Tamora  to  eat  the  pie  which  had  been  made  out  of  the 
blood  and  bones  and  heads  of  her  own  sons.  Lucius  then 
kills  Saturninus,  the  emperor,  while  Titus  kills  Tamora, 
and  her  body  is  thrown  forth  to  beasts  and  birds  of  prey. 


MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE  :   AXDRONICUS  :   PERICLES.    397 

Aaron,  the  arch  fiend,  "the  damned  Moor,"  who  is  the 
instigator  of  all  these  fiendish  acts  and  hellish  plots,  is 
punished  by  being  buried  breast  deep  in  the  ground  and 
starved  to  death.  In  Titus  Andronicus  the  reader  is 
treated  to  twelve  murders,  a  rape,  several  acts  of  mayhem 
and  mutilation,  with  a  little  cannibalism  to  vary  the 
monotony  of  murder. 

Thackeray,  that  prince  of  novelists,  must  have  had  the 
Andronicus  in  his  mind's  eye  when  he  caused  his  hero 
Pendennis  to  lapse  into  a  gloomy,  tristful  mood,  and  while 
in  that  pessimistic  state  to  produce  that  wonderful  tragedy 
at  the  reading  of  which,  though  he  killed  sixteen  persons 
before  the  second  act,  his  fond  mother  was  unable  to 
restrain  her  laughter,  thereby  irritating  the  horror-creating 
author  so  much  that  he  thrust  the  tragic  masterpiece  into 
the  fire. 

To  give  an  example  of  the  style  of  the  writer  or  writers 
of  Titus  Andronicus,  I  will  cite  one  of  Aaron's  speeches  in 
reply  to  the  accusations  of  Lucius,  quoting  from  the  first 
scene  of  the  fifth  act: 

"Lucius.  Art  thou  not  sorr}^  for  these  heinous  deeds? 
Aaron.  Ay,  that  I  had  not  done  a  thousand  more. 

Even  now  I  curse  the  day  (and  yet  I  think, 

Few  come  within  the  compass  of  m}^  curse), 

^Mierein  I  did  not  some  notorious  ill ; 

As  kill  a  man  or  else  devise  his  death; 

Ravish  a  maid,  or  plot  the  way  to  do  it ; 

Accuse  some  innocent  or  forswear  myself; 

Set  deadly  enmity  between  two  friends; 

Make  poor  men's  cattle  break  their  necks; 

Set  fire  on  barns  and  haystacks  in  the  night. 

And  bid  the  owners  quench  them  with  their  tears. 
!  Oft  have  I  digged  up  dead  men  from  their  graves, 


398  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

And  set  them  upright  at  their  dear  friends'  doors, 
Even  when  their  sorrows  almost  were  forgot. 
Tut,  I  have  done  a  thousand  dreadful  things. 
As  willingly  as  one  would  kill  a  fly; 
And  nothing  grieves  me  heartily  indeed, 
But  that  I  can  not  do  ten  thousand  more." 

It  is  no  wonder  that  the  cormnentators,  big  and  little, 
are  either  in  doubt  or  despair  as  to  Shaksper's  authorship, 
or  vehement  in  denial  of  his  right  to  be  the  maker  or 
begetter  of  the  play.  Samuel  Johnson,  the  Sir  Oracle  of 
the  English  literati,  declares  that  "all  the  editors  and 
critics  agree  in  supposing  this  play  spurious.  I  see  no 
reason  for  differing  from  them,  for  the  coloring  of  the 
style  is  wholly  different  from  that  of  the  other  plays." 
Hallam  says  that  Titus  Andronicus  is  now  by  common 
consent  denied  to  be  in  any  sense  a  production  of  Shaksper; 
and  Verplanck  adds  that  "to  these  critics  may  be  added 
the  names  of  Malone,  Steevens,  Boswell,  Seymour,  and  a 
host  of  others,  including  all  the  commentating  editors 
except  Capell." 

The  fiercest  and  most  bitter  attack  upon  the  right  of 
"the  myriad-minded  man"  to  the  authorship  of  this  play 
is  made  by  Gerald  Massey.  He  argues  that  it  is  absurd 
and  ridiculous  to  father  this  cannibalistic  catalogue  of 
horrors  upon  Shaksper. 

It  is  clear  then  that  even  the  Shakespearean  critics  and 
commentators  repudiate  Titus  Andronicus.  They  throw 
discredit  on  Meres,  and  virtually  reject  "the  true  original 
copies"  of  Heminge  and  Condell.  I  think  that  they  are 
right  about  that.  The  well-recognized  maxim,  falsus  in 
uno,  falsus  in  omnibus  (false  in  one  thing,  false  in  every- 
thing), applies  as  well  in  literature  as  in  law.     If  Heminge 


MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE :   ANDRONICUS:   PERICLES.    399 

and  Condell  falsely  and  fraudulently  imposed  Titus  An- 
dronicus  upon  the  innocent  public,  what  confidence  can 
any  sensible  person  have  in  the  Shaksper  authorship  of 
any  of  the  plays  included  in  the  Folio  of  1623? 

With  Shaksper  out  of  the  way,  by  the  admission  of  his 
own  learned,  enthusiastic,  and  blindly  devoted  adorers, 
who  then  did  write  this  rejected  play?  Can  we  find  a 
father  for  the  unfortunate  Titus? 

Upon  a  cursory  examination  I  was  at  first  inclined  to 
believe  that  Marlowe  wrote  this  play,  but  upon  a  careful 
study  of  it,  and  a  comparison  of  its  unusual  words  and 
familiar  phrases  with  those  of  other  writers  of  the  period, 
I  believe  that  Francis  Bacon  had  no  more  to  do  with  its 
composition  than  I  have.  He  could  not  have  been  its 
originator,  although  he  might  have  been  the  amender  or 
reviser  of  some  part  or  parcel  of  it.  I  am  of  the  opinion, 
based  upon  the  following  facts,  that  Drayton  and  Dekker 
originally  composed  this  hastily  written  play. 

In  Titus  Andronicus  there  are  seventeen  words  not  used 
in  the  other  plays  and  used  only  in  that  play.  These  are, 
''big-boned,  bubbling,  Cocytus,  dreary,  effectually,  erst, 
execrable,  feere,  Hymeneus,  ignominy,  lovingly,  meshed, 
metamorphosis,  misbelieving,  seizeth,  sprawl,  sumptuously, 
and  waxing";  and  there  are  eight  words  used  once  only  in 
all  the  other  plays  and  used  in  this  play,  viz:  ''Affy, 
checkered,  circling,  dissembled,  espied,  ravisher,  re-edified, 
reproachful,  ruinate."  All  these  words  are  Draytonian 
words  found  in  Queen  Margaret,  Brandon  to  Mary, 
Idea,  Cynthia's  Quest,  Polyolbion,  Harmony  of  the  Chm-ch, 
and  Barons'  Wars.  Identical  expressions  also  point  to 
Drayton.  I  give  a  few  examples  taken  from  Nymphidia, 
the  Barons'  Wars,  Mooncalf,  the  Owl,  and  Polyolbion : 


400  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

WORTHILY   SUCCEEDS. 

In  Act  1,  Scene  1,  Marcus  says:  "WTiom  worthily  you 
would  have  now  succeed." 

Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  Chapter  5,  Line  54,  says: 
"Richard,  his  son,  him  worthily  succeeds." 

CONTENT   THEE. 

In  Act  1,  Scene  2,  Titus  says:  "Content  thee,  prince." 
Drayton,  in  NjTiiphidia,  says:  "Content  thee,  I  am  no 
such  thing." 

BE    RULED    BY    ME. 

Tamora  says:  "My  lord,  be  ruled  by  me." 
Drayton,  in  Nymphidia,  says:  "Be  ruled  by  me." 

SINGLED   FORTH. 

In  Act  2,  Scene  3,  Lavinia  says:  "Are  singled  forth  to 
try  experiments." 

Drayton,  in  King  John  to  Matilda:  "One  favor  from 
the  rest,  I  singled  forth." 

HISSING   SNAKES. 

In  same  scene  Tamora  saj^s:  "A  thousand  hissing 
snakes." 

Drayton,  in  Njrmphidia,  says :  "  By  the  hissing  of  the 
snakes." 

O   WONDROUS   THING. 

In  Act  2,  Scene  4,  Tamora  says:  "0  wondrous  thing." 
Drayton,  in  Mooncalf,  says:  "0  most  wondrous  thing." 


MEASURE  FOR  MEARURE :   AXDRONICUS:   PERICLES.    401 
DISMAL   BLACK. 

In  Act  4,  Scene  2,  the  nurse  says:  "A  joyful,  dismal^ 
black  and  sorrowful  issue." 

Drayton,  in  Lady  Jane  Dudley,  says :  "  Before  the  black 
and  dismal  days  begin."  And  in  Isabella  to  Richard 
Second,  Drayton  says:  " Black, dismal, fatal,  inauspicious." 

INCARNATE    DEVIL. 

In  Act  5,  Scene  1,  Lucius  says:  ''0  worthy  Goth,  this 
is  the  incarnate  devil." 

In  the  Owl,  Drayton  says:  "And  makes  a  saint  of  an 
incarnate  devil." 

ASSURE   THEE. 

In  the  same  scene  Aaron  says:  "^Vhy,  assure  thee, 
Lucius." 

Drayton,  in  Catherine  to  Tudor,  says:  "Assure  thee, 
Tudor,  majesty  can  be." 

CRAVE    A    PARLEY. 

In  the  same  scene  Aurelius  says:  "We  crave  a  parley," 
Drayton,    in    Nymphidia,    says:  "A    parley    now    we 
crave." 

BLACK   AS   JET. 

In  Act  5,  Scene  2,  Titus  says:  "Provide  two  proper 
palfries,  black  as  jet." 

Drayton,  in  King  John  to  Matilda,  says :  "  Thy  eyeballs, 
black  as  jet." 

O    SWEET   REVENGE. 

In  same  scene  Titus  says:  "0  sweet  revenge." 


402  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  Chapter  6,  Line  80,  says: 
"0  dire  revenge." 

STILL   RENEW. 

In  Act  5,  Scene  2,  Satuininus  says:  "And  by  her 
presence  still  renews  his  sorrows." 

Drayton,  in  Polyolbion  1,  page  108,  says:  "Old  sorrows 
still  renews." 

Dekker  seems  to  have  written  a  small  part  of  the  play, 
as  for  instance  the  first  and  second  scenes  of  Act  2. 
Ejaculations,  such  as  the  following,  are  used  in  these  two 
scenes,  and  also  by  Dekker:  "Trust  me,  0  monstrous, 
gramercy,  would  serve  your  turn,  and  ring  a  hunter's 
peal."  It  was  also  a  habit  of  Dekker  to  display  his  knowl- 
edge of  Latin  by  inserting  Latin  phrases  wherever  he  could, 
and  so  in  Act  2,  Scene  1,  he  makes  Demetrius  say:  "Sit 
fas  aut  nefas,  till  I  find  the  stream  to  cool  this  heat,  a 
charm  to  calm  these  fits.  Per  stygia,  per  manes  velor.'^ 
I  have  thought  that  the  words  put  by  Dekker  into  the 
mouth  of  Horace,  alias  Jonson,  in  Satiro-mastix,  concern- 
ing the  innocent  Moor  cut  in  two  in  the  middle,  might 
refer  to  the  play  of  Titus  Andronicus.  The  words,  as  put 
into  the  mouth  of  Horace,  alias  Ben  Jonson,  are : 

"As  for  Crispinus,  that  Crispin-asse,  and  Fannius,  his 
play  dresser,  who  (to  make  the  Muses  believe  their  sub- 
jects' ears  were  starved  and  that  there  was  a  dearth  of 
poesy)  cut  an  innocent  Moor  in  the  middle  to  serve  him  in 
twice;  and  when  he  had  done,  made  Paul's  work  of  it;  as 
for  these  twins,  these  poet  apes,  their  mimic  tricks  shall 
serve,  with  mirth,  to  feast  our  muse  whilst  their  own 
starve." 


MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE :   ANDRONICUS:   PERICLES.    403 

This  bloody  and  revolting  play  must  have  been  written 
very  hurriedly.  It  undoubtedly  suited  the  taste  of  the 
frequenters  of  Henslowe's  theatre.  In  Jonson's  Bartholo- 
mew Fair,  there  is  a  sneer  at  those  critics  who  will  swear 
that  ''Jeronimoor  Andronicus  are  the  best  plays  yet." 
The  Diary  of  Henslowe  shows  that  Andronicus  was  acted 
at  his  theatre  on  several  occasions  in  1593,  and  the  edition 
of  1600  recites  that  it  had  been  often  played  by  the  theatri- 
cal servants  of  the  Earl  of  Pembroke,  the  Earl  of  Derby, 
and  the  Earl  of  Sussex. 

The  reader  will  be  amazed  at  the  way  Pericles  has  been 
treated  by  commentators.  Heminge  and  Condell  pro- 
fessed in  their  dedication  to  the  Folio  of  1623  to  have 
collected  and  published  Shaksper's  works.  Nevertheless 
the  play  of  Pericles  did  not  appear  in  that  volume,  although 
it  had  been  printed  in  1609  and  1619  and  accredited  on 
the  title  page  to  William  Shakespeare.  Heminge  and 
Condell  ought  to  have  known  of  these  editions  and  cer- 
tainly of  the  play  itself,  for  it  was  a  popular  play  and  held 
the  stage  for  many  years.  It  was  not  until  1664  that  it 
appeared  with  what  are  now  called  the  Shakespeare  plays, 
and  with  no  special  authorization. 

Rowe,  in  his  edition  of  1709,  rejected  it,  saying  that 
*'  it  is  owned  that  some  part  of  Pericles  was  written  by  him 
(Shaksper),  particularly  the  last  scene." 

Pope's  edition  followed  Rowe's,  and  in  his  preface  he 
declared  that  he  ''made  no  doubt  that  these  wretched  plays, 
Pericles,  Locrine,  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  can  not  be  admitted 
as  his." 

Following  Pope  and  Rowe,  Pericles  was  rejected  by 
Warburton,  Theobald,  Hanmer,  and  Johnson,  as  well  as  by 
the    common    popular    editions.    It    never    would    have 


404  THE    SHAKESPE.VRE    TITLE. 

appeared  again  had  it  not  been  for  Malone's  insertion  of 
it  in  his  edition.  Hallam  declared  that  ''  from  the  poverty 
and  bad  management  of  the  fable,  the  want  of  effective 
and  distinguishable  character  and  the  general  feebleness  of 
the  tragedy  as  a  whole,  I  should  not  believe  that  structure 
to  have  been  Shakespeare's."  He  elsewhere,  in  his  "  Litera- 
ture of  Europe, ' '  insists  that  "  the  play  is  full  of  e\"ident 
marks  of  an  inferior  hand."  Gifford  rejects  the  play  and 
styles  it  "the  worthless  Pericles."  Collier  says,  "an 
opinion  has  long  prevailed,  and  we  have  no  doubt  it  is 
well  founded,  that  two  hands  are  to  be  traced  in  the  com- 
position of  Pericles.  The  larger  part  of  the  first  three  acts 
were  in  all  probability  the  work  of  an  inferior  dramatist." 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  play  which  seems  to  have  no 
real  title  to  be  called  a  Shakespeare  play  at  all.  Ben 
Jonson  called  it  a  "mouldy  tale"  made  up  "of  scraps  out 
of  every  dish." 

The  first  impression  on  reading  it  carefully  is  that  it 
was  a  play  very  hastily  written,  and  it  bears  marks  of 
collaboration.  Any  one  who  has  studied  Thomas  Dekker's 
style  and  works  will  surely  recognize  Dekker's  handiwork 
in  parts  of  this  play  and  especially  in  the  fourth  act.  The 
conversation  between  the  Pander.  Bawd,  and  Boult,  in 
Scene  3,  is  truly  Dekkerian.  So  also  are  the  conversations 
in  Scene  6  of  the  same  act.  In  Act  2,  the  conversation 
with  the  fisherman,  in  Scene  l,is  full  of  Dekker's  familiar 
expressions.  "I'll  fetch  thee  with  a  wanion"  occurs  in 
Act  2,  Scene  1,  of  the  Shoemakers'  Holiday,  and  the 
phrase  "the  great  ones  eat  the  little  ones"  is  found  in 
the  Roaring  Girl,  Act  3,  Scene  3.  Dekker's  cra\'ing  to 
display  his  knowledge  of  foreign  languages  finds-  ample 
scope  in  the  next  scene,  wherein  the  devices  upon  the 


MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE :   ANDRONICUS:   PERICLES.      405 

various  shields  are  set  out.  Gower's  songs  are  plainly  the 
offspring  of  Dekker  in  part  and  Drayton  in  part.  In  Act 
4,  the  phrase  *'Hight  Philoten"  is  paralleled  in  Nymphidia, 
and  the  word  "prest,"  in  the  sense  of  prepared,  is  similarly 
used  by  Drayton  in  his  Harmony,  at  page  251. 

I  will  quote  a  few  instances  of  Draytonian  expressions: 

In  Act  2,  Scene  5,  Simonides  says,  "  I  am  glad  of  it  with 
all  my  heart." 

In  his  Idea,  Drayton  says,  "I  am  glad,  yea,  glad  with 
all  my  heart." 

In  Act  2,  Scene  3,  Thais  says,  ''To  me  he  seems  like 
diamond  to  glass." 

In  Shore  to  Edward,  Drayton  says,  "  To  make  a  glass  to 
seem  a  diamond." 

Pericles  says,  ''But  like  lesser  lights  did  veil  their 
crowns  to  his  supremacy,"  while  Drayton  in  Barons'  Wars, 
C.  3,  S.  18,  says,  "The  lesser  lights,  like  sentinels  in  war." 
In  Act  2,  Scene  4,  First  Lord  says,  "Wrong  not  yourself 
then,  noble  Helicane,"  while  in  Matilda,  S.  70,  Drayton 
says,  "Wrong  not  thy  fan*  youth,  nor  the  world  deprive." 
In  Act  4,  Scene  4,  Cleon  says,  "Were  I  chief  lord  of  all 
the  spacious  world,"  while  in  Isabel  to  Mortimer,  Drayton 
says,  "which  was  chief  lord  of  the  ascendant  then."  In 
Act  5,  Scene  1,  Pericles  says,  "Who  starves  the  ears  she 
feeds,"  while  in  Brandon  to  Mary,  Drayton  says  "and 
starve  mine  ears  to  hear  of  my  despatch." 

I  can  find  no  trace  of  Bacon  in  this  play. 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 

RICHARD  THE  SECOND  AND  JULIUS  C^SAR  EXAMINED. 

"I'll  example  you  with  thievery." 

— Timon  of  Athens,  iv,  3. 

The  play  of  Richard  the  Second  has  attracted  more 
attention  than  any  other  play  contained  in  the  Folio  of 
1623,  for  the  reason  that  it  gave  rise  to  a  famous  incident 
in  the  Essex  conspiracy.  The  following  brief  extract 
from  the  arraignment  of  Sir  Gilly  Merrick,  as  set  out  in 
Bacon's  works,  edition  of  1803,  3d  Vol.,  p.  183,  shows 
how  the  play  was  linked  with  the  story  of  that  rebellion, 
the  facts  as  to  the  acting  of  the  play  being  introduced  in 
evidence  to  show  that  Merrick  was  privy  to  the  plot. 

Merrick  was  commander  over  Essex  House,  and,  to 
quote  Bacon's  words,  "  some  few  days  before  the  rebellion 
(about  February  1,  1600),  with  great  heat  and  violence, 
he  had  displaced  certain  gentlemen  lodged  in  an  house 
fast  by  Essex-house,  and  there  planted  divers  of  my  lord's 
followers  and  complices,  all  such  as  went  forth  with  him 
in  the  action  of  rebellion.  That  the  afternoon  before  the 
rebellion,  Merrick,  with  a  great  company  of  others  that 
afterwards  were  all  in  the  action,  had  procured  to  be 
played  before  them  the  play  of  deposing  King  Richard 
the  Second.  Neither  was  it  casual,  but  a  play  bespoken 
by  Merrick.  And  not  so  only,  but  when  it  was  told  him 
by  one  of  the  players  that  the  play  was  old,  and  they 
should  have  loss  in  playing  it,  because  few  would  come 
to  it,  there  were  forty  shillings  extraordinary  given  to 
play  it,  and  so  thereupon  played  it  was.    So  earnest  was 


RICHARD   THE    SECOND   AND    JULIUS   C^SAR.  407 

he  to  satisfy  his  eyes  with  the  sight  of  that  tragedy,  which 
he  thought  soon  after  his  lordship  should  bring  from  the 
stage  to  the  state,  but  that  God  turned  it  upon  their  own 
heads." 

This  incident  has  been  made  use  of  by  some  writers  to 
connect  Francis  Bacon  with  the  authorship  of  the  play. 
I  can  not  extract  from  the  foregoing  recital  any  argument 
in  support  of  the  Baconian  theory  founded  on  that  occur- 
rence. Indeed,  as  it  is  clear  that  Bacon  virtually  con- 
ducted the  examinations  of  the  prisoners,  unless  he  really 
was  "the  meanest  of  mankind,"  he  would  not  have  uttered 
the  harsh  words  that  appear  in  his  writings  about  this 
"Catalinary  knot  and  combination  of  rebels."  Besides, 
there  is  nothing  in  the  incident  itself  to  connect  him  with 
the  authorship.  Merrick's  call  for  the  play  was  not 
inspired  by  Bacon;  and  if  any  other  play  which  lacked 
parent  had  been  called  for  by  Merrick,  it  could  just  as 
easily  have  been  fathered  upon  Bacon.  I  find  that  I  am 
supported  in  this  opinion  by  Appleton  Morgan,  who  in 
his  "Shakespeare  in  Fact  and  in  Criticism,"  at  page  178, 
says: 

"If  Francis  Bacon  wrote  Richard  II,  it  was  a  piece  of 
matchless  effrontery  for  him  to  maintain  that  his  own 
production  had  been  displayed  as  a  counterfeit  present- 
ment in  aid  of  a  treason  in  which  his  friend  was  engaged." 

There  is  no  direct  and  positive  evidence  as  to  the 
authorship,  such,  for  instance,  as  the  declaration  of  the 
author  himself  or  of  the  several  authors  (if  more  than  one), 
and  hence  I  can  only  give  the  reader  the  results  of  my 
examination  of  the  play,  with  my  opinion  based  thereon. 

Two  things  are  patent  to  the  reader.  The  play  had 
been  tried  upon  the  stage  before  1600,  for  one  of  the  players 


408  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

told  Merrick  that  it  was  old.  It  had  been  upon  the  stage 
for  several  years,  having  probably  run  its  course,  and  it 
was  not  popular  enough  to  draw  a  crowd;  and  so  they 
exacted  forty  shillmgs  from  Merrick,  as  an  extraordinary 
incentive,  before  they  would  play  it. 

It  is  mentioned  by  Meres,  and  hence  the  original  play 
must  have  been  written  before  1598. 

My  examination  of  this  play  leads  me  to  the  conclusion 
that  Michael  Drayton  had  a  principal  part  in  its  com- 
position. I  will  place  before  the  reader  the  several  phrases 
in  each  act,  with  the  corresponding  resemblances  in  Dray- 
ton's poems,  in  corroboration  of  my  view.i 

INVETERATE    MALICE. 

Gaunt,  in  Act  1,  Scene  1,  says,  ''Aimed  at  your  highness 
no  inveterate  malice,"  while  Drayton,  in  his  Barons'  Wars, 
Canto  1,  St.  30,  says,  "  Her  too  deep  settled  and  inveterate 
malice." 

HIGH    A    PITCH. 

Richard  says,  "How  high  a  pitch  his  resolution  soars"; 
and  Drayton,  in  his  fourth  Eclogue,  says,  "  To  soar  beyond 
the  usual  pitch  of  men."  So  also  in  Drayton's  Legend  of 
Robert  Duke  of  Normandy,  he  says, 

"  To  that  high  pitch  as  raised  his  desire, 
Show'd  at  the  first,  the  pitch  it  was  to  fly." 

MAKE   INCISION. 

Richard  says,  "Deep  malice  makes  too  deep  incision"; 
while  in  Idea,  St.  50,  Drayton  says,  "First  make  incision 
on  each  mastering  vein." 


RICHARD    THE    SECOND    AND    JULIUS    C^SAR.  409 

SHARPER   SPUR. 

In  Act  1,  Scene  2,  the  Duchess  says,  "Finds  brother- 
hood in  thee  no  sharper  spur";  and  in  Piers  Gaveston, 
Drayton  says,  "Which  proved  sharp  spurs  to  my  untamed 
desire." 

MINE    INNOCENCY. 

In  Act  1,  Scene  3,  BoUngbroke  says,  "Mine  innocency 
and  Saint  George  to  thrive,"  while  Drayton,  in  Matilda, 
St.  83,  says,  "0,  let  the  grave  mine  innocency  hold." 

WHOLESOME    COUNSEL   AND    UNSTAYED    YOUTH. 

In  Act  2,  Scene  1,  Gaunt  says,  "In  wholesome  counsel 
to  his  unstayed  youth";  while  Drayton,  in  his  dedication 
to  Queen  Isabel,  says,  "Imperfections  of  heedless  and 
unstayed  youth,"  and  in  his  Heroical  Epistles,  p.  189,  he 
says,  "WTiolesome  counsel  to." 

NO   WHIT. 

Gaunt  says,  "The  waste  is  no  whit  lesser  than  thy 
land."  Drayton,  in  Nymphidia,  says,  "No  whit  her 
state  impairing." 

COMFORTABLE    WORDS. 

The  Queen,  in  Act  2,  Scene  2,  says,  "  For  heaven's  sake, 
speak  comfortable  words."  In  Legend  of  Robert,  Drayton 
says,  "Giving  the  soldiers  comfortable  words";  and  he 
uses  the  same  phrase  in  Queen  Margaret. 

I   WOULD   TO   GOD. 

York  uses  this  expression  and  Drayton  also  in  Duke 
Humphrey  to  Queen  Eleanor. 


410  THE    SHAKESPEAEE   TITLE. 


AT   SIX  AND   SEVEN. 

York  says,  "And  everything  is  left  at  six  and  seven"; 
while  Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  5,  S.  37,  says,  "  Except 
that  thou  set  all  at  six  and  seven." 

THE   WAVERING   COMMONS. 

Bagot  says,  "And  that's  the  wavering  commons"; 
while  Drayton,  in  Richard  2  to  Isabel,  says,  "The  uncer- 
tain commons,  touched  with  inward  care." 

STANDS    CONDEMNED. 

Bolingbroke  says,  "Will  you  permit  that  I  shall  stand 
condemned";  Bushy  says,  "A\nierein  the  king  stands 
generally  condemned";  while  Drayton,  in  King  Henry 
to  Rosamond,  says,  "  And  stand  condemned  by  a  coimcil's 
doom." 

'tis  not  my  meaning. 

Berkeley  says,  "'Tis  not  my  meaning";  while  Drayton, 
in  dedication  to  Harmony,  says,  "my  meaning  is  not." 

MARS   OF   MEN. 

York  says,  "Rescued  the  Black  Prince,  that  young 
Mars  of  men";  while  Drayton,  in  Agincourt,  says,  "That 
Mars  of  men,  this  king  of  earthly  kings." 

DISSOLVED   TO   TEARS. 

Richard,  in  Act  3,  Scene  2,  says,  "  As  if  the  world  were 
all  dissolved  to  tears";  while  Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars, 
C.  6,  S.  70,  says,  "  Dissolved  to  tears,  she  followed  him, 
0  tears." 


RICHARD   THE   SECOND   AND   JULIUS   C^SAR.  411 

AX   ANOINTED   KING. 

Richard  says,  ''can  wash  the  balm  from  an  anointed 
king,"  and  York  says,  "Com'st  thou  because  the  anointed 
king  is  here";  while  Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  5, 
S.  15,  says,  "The  awful  right  of  an  anointed  king." 

DEPOSING    OF   A    KING. 

Richard  says,  "Containing  the  deposing  of  a  king," 
and  again,  "For  the  deposing  of  a  rightful  king";  while 
Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  5,  S.  9,  says,  "  "What  toucheth 
the  deposing  of  a  king." 

PLUCKED    UP. 

Gardmer  says,  "Plucked  up  root  and  all  by  Boling- 
broke."  Drayton,  in  the  poem  of  Cromwell,  says,  "AVho, 
her  religion  plucked  up  by  the  root." 

PLUCKED    DOT\'N. 

In  Act  4,  Scene  1,  Richard  says,  "Your  cares  set  up  do 
not  pluck  my  cares  down."  Drayton,  m  Pol.  1,  p.  157, 
says,  "Will  pluck  down  all  the  church." 

YET    UNBORN. 

Carlisle  says,  "The  children  yet  unborn  shall  feel  this 
day."  Drayton,  in  2  Margaret,  says,  "The  babe  that's 
yet  unborn  shall  rue." 

PLAINTS    AND    PRAYERS. 

Duchess  says,  "That  hearing  how  our  plaints  and 
prayers  do  pierce."  Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  6, 
S.  70,  says,  "  Her  plaints  so  piercing  and  her  grief  so  much." 


412  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

TIME    RUNS   POSTING. 

Richard  says,  "But  my  time  rmis  posting  on."  Dray- 
ton, in  Piers  Gaveston,  says,  "When  posting  time  that 
never  turns  again." 

FATAL    HAND. 

Bohngbroke  says,  ''A  deed  of  slander  with  thy  fatal 
hand."  Drayton,  in  Eleanor  to  Duke  Humphrey,  says, 
"A  fatal  hand  his  sovereign  to  have  slain." 

Such  phrases  as  these  are  also  common  to  both:  "If 
aught  but,  I  doubt  not  but,  give  me  leave."  The  play 
uses  "sky-aspiring,"  and  Drayton  uses  "sky-attempting." 

Single  words  used  only  once  in  all  the  plays,  used  in 
this  play  of  Richard  the  Second,  and  used  also  by  Drayton, 
are  as  follows:  "Abet,  crossly,  dangling,  disburdened, 
intermixed,  misgoverned,  monarchize,  noblesse,  stream- 
ing, thundering,  well-disposed,  well-meaning." 

Michael  Drayton  was  not  only  thoroughly  fitted  to 
write  the  play  of  Richard  the  Second,  but  he  was  familiar 
with  every  incident  of  Richard's  reign.  He  had  immor- 
talized Richard  in  his  Epistles,  and  the  subject  was  pecul- 
iarly in  his  line.  Whoever  will  read  his  Barons'  Wars  and 
his  Heroical  Epistles,  and  study  Drayton's  style,  will  con- 
clude that  there  is  no  necessity  for  searching  for  any  other 
poet  than  Michael  Drayton  to  find  the  principal  author 
of  Richard  the  Second.  Poor  Drayton  suffered  from  the 
indifference  of  James  the  First.  The  king  seemed  to 
dislike  him,  and  it  may  have  been  because  of  a  suspicion 
engendered  in  the  king's  mind  that  Drayton  had  a  main 
hand  in  the  composition  of  Richard  the  Second.  In 
Drayton's  Epistle  to  George  Sandys,  as  heretofore  shown. 


RICHARD   THE    SECOND   AND   JULIUS   C^SAR.  413 

he  gives  vent  to  his  mortification  and  disgust  at  his  ill 
treatment  by  the  king.  As  a  matter  of  fact  indisputable, 
the  play  of  Richard  the  Second  was  put  upon  the  stage 
before  1597,  for  its  first  appearance  in  print  was  in  that 
year,  and  the  name  of  no  author  was  attached  to  it. 

Valentine  Simms,  who  printed  that  edition  for  Andrew 
Wise,  printed  another  in  the' year  1598  and  on  the  title 
page  put  these  words,  "By  William  Shake-speare." 
Between  that  period  and  1608,  the  additions  of  the  parlia- 
ment scene  and  the  deposing  of  King  Richard  were  added 
to  the  original  play,  and  I  should  be  inclined  to  think  that 
these  new  additions  are  what  Henslowe  refers  to  in  the 
Diary,  at  page  121,  by  the  following  entry:  ''Lent  unto 
the  company  to  geve  Mr  Willsone,  Dickers,  Drayton  and 
Cheattell  in  part  payment  of  a  booke  called  Perce  of 
Exstone,  the  some  of  forty  shillings."  Collier,  in  a  note, 
says,  "  Sir  Piers  of  Exton  killed  Richard  II,  and  this  play 
was  most  likely  connected  with  this  historical  incident." 
Since  the  new  additions  to  Richard  the  Second,  published 
in  1608,  embrace  the  story  of  Exton's  villainous  act,  it  is 
very  likely  that  Henslowe  paid  Drayton,  Wilson,  Dekker, 
and  Chettle  for  these  very  additions  about  the  first  of 
April,  1598.  Henslowe,  of  course,  was  not  very  particular 
about  the  title  of  the  plays  which  he  bought.  All  that  he 
cared  to  do  was  to  write  some  name,  if  only  that  of  one  of 
the  characters  of  the  play,  by  which  he  could  identify  his 
purchase. 

I  nmst  not  omit  to  call  the  reader's  attention  to  the 
prophecy  of  Gaunt,  recorded  in  the  first  scene  of  act  second, 
beginning  thus:  "Methinks  I  am  a  prophet  new  inspired." 
It  is  not  only  in  the  very  style  of  Drayton,  but  the  lines 
embody  the  passionate  love  of  the  poet  for  the  land  of  his 


414  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

nativity.  D'Israeli,  in  his  "Amenities  of  Literature," 
speaking  of  the  Polyolbion,  beautifully  and  truthfully 
describes  Drayton's  patriotic  feelings  when  he  says, 
"The  grand  theme  of  this  poet  was  his  fatherland!  The 
muse  of  Drayton  passes  by  every  town  and  tower,  and 
tells  'some  tale  of  ancient  glory  or  of  some  worthy  who 
must  never  die." 

Drayton's  style,  to  any  one  familiar  with  his  poems 
descriptive  of  preparations  for  war  or  a  campaign,  may 
be  recognized  in  Northumberland's  speech  on  the  last 
page  of  the  same  scene,  a  part  of  which  is  here  inserted  for 
the  reader's  convenience: 

"North.  Then  thus:  I  have  from  Port  le  Blanc,  a  bay 
In  Britanny,  received  intelligence 
That  Henry,   duke   of  Hereford,   Reginald   Lord 

Cobham, 
That  late  broke  from  the  duke  of  Exeter, 
His  brother.  Archbishop  late  of  Canterbury, 
Sir  Thomas  Erpingham,  Sir  John  Ramston, 
Sir  John  Norbery,  Sir  Robert  Waterton  and  Francis 

Quoint, 
All  these  well  furnished  by  the  duke  of  Bretagne, 
With  eight  tall  ships,  three  thousand  men  of  war, 
Are  making  hither  with  all  due  expedience, 
And  shortly  mean  to  touch  our  northern  shore." 

The  man  who  wrote  the  Barons'  Wars,  the  Heroical 
Epistles,  and  Queen  Margaret  summed  up  in  them  the 
gathering  of  forces  for  battle  in  the  very  same  way  that 
Northumberland  does  in  the  play  at  the  request  of  Ross. 

I  pass  on  to  the  play  of  Julius  Caesar,  and  I  fix  the 
date  of  its  composition  in  the  year  1602.  In  this,  I  differ 
from  the  guessers  and  conjecturers,  like  Malone  and  others, 
who  have  stated  that  this  play  could  not  have  been  wTitten 


RICHARD   THE   SECOND   AND   JULIUS   CAESAR.  415 

before  1607.  I  place  the  date  at  1602,  for  the  reason  that 
Henslowe  so  fixes  it  in  his  Diary.  The  entry  will  be  found 
at  page  221,  and  a  verbatim  copy  of  it  (followed  by  a  note 
of  Collier's)  reads  as  follows: 

"Lent  unto  the  companye,  the  22  of  May,  1602,  to  geve 
unto  Antoney  Monday  and  Mikell  Drayton,  Webster, 
Mydleton  and  the  rest,  in  earneste  of  a  Boocke  called 
Sesers  Falle  the  some  of  V  li." 

Collier's  note  at  the  foot  of  this  page  reads  thus: 
"  Malone  passed  over  this  important  entry  without  notice : 
it  shews  that  in  May,  1602,  four  poets  who  are  named  (viz., 
Monday,  Drayton,  Webster,  and  Middleton)  and  some 
others  not  named,  were  engaged  in  wTiting  a  play  upon 
the  subject  of  the  fall  of  Caesar.  See  Collier's  Shake- 
peare  7,  4,  where  it  is  contended  that  the  Julius  Caesar 
of  our  great  dramatist  was  written  in  1603." 

Collier's  opinion  that  Julius  Caesar  was  written  in  1603 
is  based  upon  a  fact  which  actually  supports  my  date  and 
is  in  line  with  Henslowe's  memorandum.  Collier  says: 
"In  Drayton's  Barons'  Wars,  the  poet,  speaking  of  Morti- 
mer, says: 

'  Such  one  he  was,  of  him  we  boldly  say 
In  whose  rich  soul  all  sovereign  powers  did  suit, 
In  whom  in  peace  the  elements  all  lay 
So  mixed  as  none  could  sovereignty  impute; 
As  all  did  govern,  yet  all  did  obey; 
His  lively  temper  was  so  absolute, 
That  it  seemed  when  heaven  his  model  first  began. 
In  hhn  it  showed  perfection  in  a  man.' 

"Italic  type  is  hardly  necessary  to  establish  that  one 
poet  must  have  availed  himself,  not  only  of  the  thought, 
but  of  the  very  words  of  the  other.     The  question  is,  was 


416  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Shakespeare  indebted  to  Drayton  or  Drayton  to  Shake- 
speare?" 

The  natural  and  truthful  answer  to  Collier's  question  is 
that  the  Shakespeare  who  wrote  the  fifth  scene  of  the 
fifth  act  of  Julius  Csesar  was  the  Michael  Drayton  who 
wrote  Mortomeriados,  published  in  1598,  and  therefore 
there  was  neither  borrowing  nor  purloining.  Craik,  the 
author  of  "The  English  of  Shakespeare,"  in  commenting 
on  this  scene,  at  page  345  of  his  book,  says,  ''This  passage 
is  remarkable  from  its  resemblance  to  a  passage  in  Dray- 
ton's poem  of  the  Barons'  Wars." 

In  Drayton's  subsequent  edition  of  the  Barons'  Wars, 
issued  in  1619,  he  remodeled  the  passage,  retaining,  how- 
ever, all  the  substantive  part  of  the  former  editions. 

There  are  other  remarkable  resemblances,  not  hitherto 
brought  to  the  notice  of  scholars  in  such  a  way  as  to  call 
particular  attention  to  Drayton.  I  now  note  them.  In 
Act  2,  Scene  1,  line  83,  Brutus  says,  ''For  if  thou  path 
thy  native  semblance  on."  Here  "path"  is  used  as  a 
verb.  Coleridge  wished  to  change  the  word  to  "put," 
and  so  did  Knight;  but  "path"  is  a  Draytonian  word, 
and  the  proper  one.  In  one  of  Drayton's  notes  appended 
to  Rosamond,  he  says,  "For  this  never  did  so  strangely 
path  itself,"  and  in  Duke  Humphrey  to  Eleanor,  he  says, 
"Pathing  young  Henry's  unadvised  ways." 

There  was  no  Decius  Brutus  as  stated  in  the  play. 
Decimus  Brutus  was  meant,  and  he  had  been  the  particular 
favorite  and  friend  of  Csesar.  In  the  play  he  is  wrongly 
called  Decius,  not  by  the  printer,  but  by  the  writer  of  the 
play,  and  that  may  account  for  the  nickname  of  the 
"poet  Decius"  given  by  Sir  John  Davies  to  Drayton. 

In  Act  2,  Scene  2,  Calphurnia  says : 


RICHARD   THE   SECOND   AND   JULIUS   C^SAR.  417 

"When  beggars  die,  there  are  no  comets  seen; 
The   heavens   themselves   blaze   forth   the   death   of 
princes." 

The  same  thought  occurs  in  Drayton's  Queen  Margaret: 

"As  when  some  dreadful  comet  doth  appear, 
Athwart  the  heaven  that  throws  his  threatening  light, 
Some,  war,  some,  plagues,  some,  famine  greatly  fear; 
Some,  falls  of  kingdoms  or  of  men  of  might." 

And  in  Matilda,  he  says: 

"  And  as  a  comet  in  the  evening  sky. 
Struck  with  amazement  every  wondering  eye." 

But  in  the  phrases  peculiarly  familiar  to  young  scholars 
and  declaimers,  the  identification  of  Drayton  manifests 
itself  plainly.     Thus,  in  Act  1,  Scene  2,  Cassius  says: 

"The  torrent  roar'd;  and  we  did  buffet  it 
With  lusty  sinews;" 

while  Drayton,  in  Pol.  1,  p.  16,  says: 

"Their  lusty  sinews  swell,  like  cables  as  they  strive." 

In  the  next  line  of  the  play  the  word  "stemming"  is  used, 
and  used  only  once  in  the  plays,  and  it  is  used  by  Drayton 
in  Mortimer  to  Isabel. 

In  the  same  act  and  scene,  Csesar  says,  "  Yond  Cassius 
has  a  lean  and  hungry  look" ;  and  Drayton,  in  Pol.  1,  p.  77, 
says:  "The  lean  and  hungry  earth."  Cassius  says:  "And 
bear  the  palm  alone,"  while  Drayton,  in  Pol.  3,  page  46, 
says:  "And  bear  the  palm  away";  and  at  page  55,  idem, 
he  says:  "the  palm  away  to  bear."     Brutus  says:  "Till 


418  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

then,  my  noble  friend,  chew  upon  this";  Drayton,  in  his 
epistle  to  Jeffreys,  says:  '^ My  nohle  friend,  I  would."  In 
the  third  scene  of  the  same  act,  Casca  says: 

"  I  have  seen  tempests,  when  the  scolding  winds 
Have  riv'd  the  knotty  oaks"; 

and  Drayton,  in  Eclogue  second,  says:  ''Now  am  I  like 
the  aged  knotty  oaks." 

Cassius  says :  "  Our  yoke  and  sufferance  shows  us  woman- 
ish." Drayton,  in  Pol.  2,  p.  183,  says:  "Apparel  often 
shows  us  womanish." 

In  Scene  1  of  Act  3,  Antony  says :  "  A  curse  shall  light 
upon  the  limbs  of  men";  while  Drayton,  in  Heroical 
Epistles,  p.  184,  says:  "My  curse  light  on  his  head." 

In  Scene  2  of  the  same  act,  Antony  says : 

"Ingratitude,  more  strong  than  traitor's  arms. 
Quite  vanquished  him." 

Drayton,  in  the  53d  stanza  of  Matilda,  exclaims: 
"Ingratitude,  how  deeply  dost  thou  wound!" 

First  Citizen  says:  "0, piteous  spectacle!"  while  Dray- 
ton, in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  2,  S.  67,  exclaims:  "0,  spectacle." 

First  Citizen  says:  "0!  most  bloody  sight";  while 
Drayton,  in  Pol.  3,  p.  45,  says:  "0!  most  amazing  sight," 
and  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  2,  S.  69,  he  says:  " 0,  bloody  age." 

Third  Citizen  says:  "Pluck  down  benches,"  and  the 
Fourth  Citizen  says:  "Pluck  down  forms";  while  Dray- 
ton, in  Pol.  1,  p.  157,  says:  "Will  pluck  down  all  the 
Church." 

In  the  third  scene  of  act  four,  Brutus  says : 


RICHARD   THE   SECOND   AND   JULIUS   C.ESAR.  419 

"Let  me  tell  you,  Cassius,  you  yourself 
Are  much  condemned  to  have  an  itching  palm." 

while  in  Agincourt,  Drayton  says: 

"Felt  as  they  thought,  their  bloody  palms  to  itch." 

In  the  first  scene  of  act  five,  Cassius  says : 

"  And  in  their  steads,  do  ravens,  crows  and  kites," 
while  Drayton,  in  David  and  Goliath,  says: 
"The  kites  and  ravens  are  not  far  away." 

In  the  fourth  scene,  Lucilius  says:  "I  dare  assure 
thee,"  while  Drayton,  in  Nymphidia,  says:  "I  dare  assure 
you." 

Among  the  words  used  once  only  in  the  plays  and  used 
in  this  play,  and  also  used  by  Drayton,  are,  "  rabblement, 
illuminate,  recreate,  and  tag-rag."  The  word  "caute- 
lous"  used  in  Scene  1,  Act  2,  is  a  Draytonian  word,  used 
by  him  in  Queen  Margaret,  and  it  is  also  found  in  Corio- 
lanus,  A.  4,  S.  1,  L.  33. 

These  striking  resemblances  show  one  of  two  things: 
either  that  Drayton  was  a  great  plagiarist,  or  else  that  he 
had  a  part  in  the  composition  of  the  play  generally  called 
Julius  Caesar.  It  is  clear,  as  an  examination  of  Hens- 
lowe's  Diary  will  show,  that  Drayton  was  the  most  careful 
and  industrious  writer  of  plays  of  the  many  poets  in  Hens- 
lowe's  employment.  His  honesty,  sincerity,  and  ability 
have  never  been  questioned  by  critics,  commentators,  or 
students  of  the  drama.  The  entry  of  the  composition  of 
Caesar's  Fall  shows  that  Drayton  was  a  party  to  the 
authorship  of  the  play.     It  had  noble  parents.     Anthony 


420  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Monday,  "our  best  plotter"  (according  to  Meres),  Thomas 
Middleton,  and  John  Webster,  three  poets  and  dramatists 
of  the  first  rank,  were  Drayton's  coadjutors.  In  the  Foho 
of  1623  the  play  is  called,  at  the  beginning  and  over  each 
page,  "The  Tragedy  of  Julius  Csesar,"  and  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Folio  it  is  entered  as  "  The  Life  and  Death  of 
Julius  Caesar." 

If  the  reader  will  compare  the  colloquy  between  Brutus 
and  Portia,  as  found  in  Act  2,  Scene  2,  with  that  between 
Hotspur  and  Lady  Percy,  as  found  in  Act  2,  Scene  3,  of 
Henry  the  Fourth,  he  will  be  struck  with  the  marvelous 
resemblance  in  the  style  and  even  the  thoughts  expressed. 
If  I  am  right  in  my  opinion,  based  on  the  foregoing  facts, 
as  to  the  composers  of  Julius  Caesar,  it  will  be  found  on  an 
examination  of  Henry  the  Fourth  that  Drayton  wrote 
that  particular  part  of  a  scene  in  Henry  the  Fourth. 

In  Act  2,  Scene  1,  of  Julius  Caesar,  which  I  particularly 
specify  as  the  work  of  Drayton,  the  reader  will  notice  the 
wrong  use  of  the  word  "exorcistJ'  An  exorcist,  accord- 
ing to  the  Standard  Dictionary  and  all  other  authorities 
as  to  definition,  is  one  who  casts  or  drives  out  evil  spirits; 
he  is  one  who  expels  evil  spirits  by  means  of  adjuration  or 
incantation,  or  the  like.  The  ceremony  of  exorcism  is 
used  in  the  Greek  and  Latin  churches.  But  in  Julius 
Caesar,  Ligarius  uses  the  word  improperly,  for  in  Act  2, 
Scene  1,  replying  to  Brutus,  he  says: 

"Thou,  like  an  exorcist,  has  conjur'd  up 
My  mortified  spirit." 

The  writer  believed  that  an  exorcist  was  one  who  raised 
spirits  instead  of  casting  them  out.     And  so  in  Cymbeline, 


RICHARD   THE   SECOND   AND   JULIUS   CESAR.  421 

A,  4,  S.  2,  the  poet  wrongly  says:  "No  exorcist  harm 
thee,"  and  in  All's  Well,  A.  5,  S.  3,  the  King  exclaims: 

"Is  there  no  exorcist 
Beguiles  the  truer  office  of  mine  eyes?" 

The  poet  makes  the  same  blunder  in  Second  Henry  the 
Sixth,  A.  1,  S.  4,  where  Bolingbroke  asks,  "Will  her  lady- 
ship behold  and  hear  our  exorcisms?" 

If  the  careful  reader  will  examine  the  works  of  Michael 
Drayton,  he  will  find  that  Drayton  was  such  a  blunderer. 
He  will  also  find  that  Thomas  Dekker  so  blundered  in  his 
dedication  of  Satiro-mastix. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

HENRY  THE    SIXTH,  PARTS    1,  2,  AND    3,  EXAMINED. 

"Let's  go  hand  in  hand." 

—Comedy  of  Errors,  v,  1. 

The  earliest  reliable  evidence  as  to  this  play,  available 
to  the  reader,  I  have  carefully  collected  from  Henslowe's 
Diary,  the  entries  being  copied  from  pages  22,  23,  24,  25,  26 
27,  28,  and  30. 

"R'd  at  Henery  the  VI,  the  3  of  Marche,  1591,  £  3, 
16s,  5d." 

"R'd  at  Hary  VI,  the  7  of  Marche,  1591,  £  3." 
''R'd  at  Hary  VI,  the  11  of  Marche,  1591,  47s,  6d." 
"R'd  at  Harey  the  16  of  Marche,  1591,  31s,  6d." 
"R'd  at  Harey  the  VI,  the  28  of  Marche,  1591,  £  3,  8s." 
"R'd  at  Harey  the  VI,  the  5  of  Aprell,  1591,  41s." 
"R'd  at  Harey  the  VI,  the  13  of  Aprell,  1591,  26s." 
"R'd  at  Harey  the  VI,  the  21  of  Aprell,  1591,  33s." 
''R'd  at  Harey  the  VI,  the  4  of  May  1592,  16s." 
R'd  at  Harey  the  VI,  the  7  of  Maye  1592,  22s." 
R'd  at  Harey  the  VI,  the  19  of  Maye  1592,  30s." 
"  R'd  at  Harey  the  VI,  the  25  of  Maye  1592,  24s." 
"R'd  at  Harey  the  VI,  the  12  of  June  1592,  33s." 
"R'd  at  Harey  the  VI,  the  19  of  June  1592,  31s." 
"R'd  at  Harey  the  6,  the  16  of  Janewary  1593,  46s." 
"R'd  at  Harey  the  VI,  the  31  of  Janewary  1593,  26s." 
Collier,  the  editor,  has  inserted,  at  page  22,  the  follow- 
ing note :  "  This  play,  whether  by  Shakespeare  or  not,  was 
extremely  popular  and  profitable.     It  produced  Henslowe 
£1,  lis,  Od  for  his  share  on  its  fourteenth  representation. 


HENRY   THE    SIXTH,    PARTS    1,    2,    AND   3.  423 

On  its  performance  in  1591,  we  here  see  that  it  brought 
him  £3,  16s,  5d.  Malone  was  of  the  opinion  that  it  was 
the  First  part  of  Henry  the  Sixth,  included  among  Shalie- 
speare's  works;  and  it  is  certain  that  this  entry  of  3 
March  1591  relates  to  its  original  production,  as  Henslowe 
has  put  his  mark  ne  in  the  margin." 

As  to  the  fourth  entry.  Collier  says,  "Meaning,  no 
doubt,  Harey  or  Henry  VI." 

The  natural  presumption  from  the  foregoing  entries  is 
that  Malone  was  right  in  his  opinion  that  this  play  was 
the  first  part  of  Henry  the  Sixth,  unless  it  can  be  shown  to 
the  contrary. 

As  the  true  authorship  of  the  several  parts  is  the  matter 
now  to  be  considered,  I  will  state  what  the  results  of  my 
investigation  are,  based  on  an  examination  of  the  several 
parts  of  the  play;  and  I  will  put  the  reader  in  possession 
of  the  facts  so  that  he  can  judge  for  himself. 

It  is  very  clear  from  a  study  of  the  opinions  of  the  most 
learned  commentators,  believers  as  they  were  and  are  in 
Shaksper's  ability  and  learning,  that  they  nevertheless 
repudiate  his  authorship  of  the  three  parts  of  Henry  the 
Sixth.  The  following  quotation  from  Verplanck's  intro- 
ductory remarks  attached  to  the  play  in  his  edition  of 
the  plays,  very  clearly  and  concisely  states  the  consensus 
of  opinion  on  the  subject: 

''For  two  centuries  from  their  first  appearance,  these 
plays,  containing  the  story  of  Henry  VI,  were  acknowl- 
edged, read,  acted,  and  printed  and  reprinted  as  the  gen- 
uine works  of  Shakespeare,  with  a  universality  of  acquies- 
cence which  was  scarcely  interrupted  by  a  dogmatic 
doubt  or  denial  of  authenticity  thrown  out  by  the  feeble 
Theobald,  the  paradoxical  Warburton  or  the  over-ingenious 


424  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Morgann.  It  may,  therefore,  surprise  many  readers,  who 
may  not  have  kept  pace  with  the  later  Shakespearean 
criticisms,  to  be  informed  that  a  majority  of  the  later 
English  critics  have  adopted  or  incline  to  an  h}'pothesis, 
brought  forward  by  Malone  about  sixty  years  ago,  that 
the  first  part  of  King  Henry  VI,  as  it  now  appears  (of 
which  no  quarto  copy  is  extant),  was  the  entire,  or  nearly 
the  entire  production  of  some  unknowTi  ancient  dramatist." 

Further  on,  ^>rplanck  states  that  "Malone's  argument 
is  contained  in  a  long  dissertation  printed  in  the  several 
Variorum  editions  of  Shakespeare.  It  is  founded  mainly, 
as  relates  to  this  first  part,  upon  its  dissimilarity  of  versifi- 
cation and  phraseolog}'  to  that  of  Shakespeare;  and  its 
resemblance  in  those  things  to  the  \sTitings  of  Greene  and 
Peele,  etc.;  upon  the  classical  allusions  and  Latin  quota- 
tions, too  learned  and  too  abundant  for  the  unlettered 
Shakespeare;  upon  two  or  three  slight  historical  inaccura- 
cies or  discrepancies  with  the  other  plays  of  this  series; 
upon  the  use  of  Hall's  Chronicle  as  the  historical  authority, 
instead  of  Holinshed,  who  is  known  to  have  been  Shake- 
speare's guide;  with  some  stUl  slighter  circumstances." 

Here,  now,  is  a  fatal  blow  administered  to  the  begetters 
or  producers  of  the  three  parts  of  Henry  the  Sixth,  whether 
you  call  them  Heminge  and  Condell  or  a  syndicate  of 
publishers  or  Francis  Bacon. 

Now,  my  study  of  the  several  parts  of  this  play  induces 
me  to  believe  that  Michael  Drayton  and  Thomas  Dekker 
were  the  principal  composers  of  the  play  as  it  appeared  in 
the  Folio  of  1623.  I  find  many  traces  also  of  Anthony 
Monday  in  the  play. 

I  will  first  show  Drayton's  connection  with  the  several 
parts  of  the  play  by  means  of  phrases  or  expressions  com- 


HENRY   THE    SIXTH,    PARTS    1,    2,    AND    3.  425 

mon  to  him  and  also  to  one  of  the  writers  of  the  play,  and 
then  supplement  them  with  the  list  of  words  used  once  or 
twice  only  in  this  particular  play  and  in  all  the  plays,  as 
also  in  the  works  of  Drayton.  Dekker's  connection  with 
the  authorship  will  then  be  set  out  in  the  same  order. 
Some  of  the  identical  expressions  are  as  follows: 

LINGERING   WARS. 

In  A.  1,  S.  1,  the  Messenger  says,  "One  would  have 
lingering  wars  with  little  cost";  while  in  Pol.  2,  p.  8,  Dray- 
ton says,  "  But  by  the  lingering  wars." 

TO    ADD    TO. 

The  third  Messenger  says,  "My  gracious  lords,  to  add  to 
your  laments";  while  Drayton,  in  Isabel  to  Richard  2, 
says,  "  To  add  to  our  afflictions." 

UNDAUNTED   SPIRIT. 

The  same  messenger  says,  "His  soldiers  spying  his 
undaunted  spirit" ;  while  in  Cromwell,  Drayton  says,  "That 
is  the  man  of  an  undaunted  spirit";  and  in  Pol.  1,  p.  193, 
Drayton  says,  "Which  their  undaunted  spirits  soon  made 
that  conqueror  feel."  This  phrase  is  repeated  in  A.  3,  S.  2, 
where  Talbot  says,  "  Undaunted  spirit  in  a  dying  breast"; 
and  also  in  A.  5,  S.  5,  where  Suffolk  says,  "Her  valiant 
courage  and  undaunted  spirit." 

BE    NOT    DISMAYED. 

In  A.  1,  S.  2,  the  Bastard  of  Orleans  says,  "  Be  not  dis- 
mayed, for  succor  is  at  hand";  while  in  Eleanor  Cobham 
to  Duke  Humphrey,  Drayton  says,  "  Be  not  dismayed,  nor 


426  THE  shakespe.jlee  title. 

let  my  name  affright " ;  and  in  Owen  Tudor  to  Queen  Cath- 
erine, he  uses  the  same  expression. 

BE  XOT  a:mazed. 

Pucelle  says,  ''Be  not  amazed,  there's  nothing  hid  from 
me";  while  in  Agincourt,  St.  4,  Drayton  says  the  same. 

TO   THE   L.\ST    GASP. 

Pucelle  says,  ''Fight  till  the  last  gasp,  I  will  be  your 
guard."  and  in  the  third  part.  A.  2.  S.  1.  Warwick  says, 
"TThere  your  brave  father  breathed  hu  latest  gasp'';  while 
Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  5,  S.  64,  says,  "To  his  last 
gasp  to  move  them  with  his  woe,"  and  ide?7i  in  Divorce. 

BRIGHT   STAR    OF. 

Charles  says,  "Bright  star  of  Venus,"  while  Drayton,  in 
Idea,  St.    4,  says,  "Bright  star  of  beauty." 

HALCYON    DAYS. 

Pucelle  says,  ''Expect  St.  Martin's  summer,  halcyon 
days";  while  Dra}i:on.  in  Pol.  3.  p.  174,  says,  "Prognosti- 
cates to  them  a  happy  halc}'on  day." 

EVDLESS    PRAISE. 

Charles  says,  in  Act  1.  Scene  6,  "Shall  in  procession 
sing  her  endless  praise."  Drayton,  in  Pol.  2.  p.  119,  says, 
"  But  to  his  endless  praise,  oiu*  English  Athelstan." 

SCOLTIGE    OF   FRANXE. 

Countess  says,  in  A.  2,  S.  3,  "Is  this  the  scourge  of 
France?"    Dra}^on  says,  in  a  note  made  by  him  in  Elea- 


HENRY   THE    SIXTH,    PARTS    1,    2,    AND   3.  427 

nor  to  Duke  Humphrey,  "  That  scourge  of  France  and  the 
glory  of  the  EngUshman," 

FOR   THE   NONCE. 

Countess  says,  "This  is  a  riddUng  merchant  for  the 
nonce."  Drayton,  in  Nymphidia,  says,  "And  daintily 
made  for  the  nonce." 

THE   WHOLE   FRAME. 

Talbot  says,  "  I  tell  you,  Madam,  were  the  whole  frame 
here."  Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  3,  S.  46,  says, 
"And  the  whole  frame  of  heaven  made  up  the  choir." 

FAME   HATH   BRUITED. 

Countess  says,  "  I  find  thou  art  no  less  than  fame  hath 
bruited."  Drayton,  in  Agincourt,  says,  "But  what  is 
bruited  of  the  general  fame." 

SHARP    AND    PIERCING. 

Plantagenet  says,  in  A.  2,  S.  4,  "  Ay,  sharp  and  pierc- 
ing to  maintain  his  truth";  while  Drayton,  in  Nymphidia, 
says,  "  He  had  a  sharp  and  piercing  sight." 

PLUCK  THIS   RED   ROSE. 

Suffolk  says,  "I  pluck  this  red  rose  with  young  Somer- 
set." Drayton,  in  Queen  Margaret,  says,  "To  pluck  their 
red  rose  quite  up  by  the  root." 

I    DOUBT    NOT    BUT.  . 

Plant.,  in  A.  2,  S.  5,  says,  "/  doubt  not  but  with  honor 
to  redress."  Drayton,  in  Pol.  2,  p.  168,  uses  the  same 
words. 


428  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 


SMOOTHED    BROW. 


Warwick,  in  A.  3,  S.  1,  says,  "As  by  his  smoothed  brow 
it  doth  appear."  Drayton,  in  Pol.  1,  p.  152,  says,  "Who 
to  that  time  still  with  a  smoothed  brow." 


FLESH   AND   SINEWS. 


Exeter  says,  "Till  bones  and  flesh  and  sinews  fall  away" ; 
while  Drayton,  in  Eleanor  to  Duke  Humphrey,  says,  "To 
tear  both  flesh  and  sinews  from  the  bone." 

VULGAR   SORT. 

Pucelle  says,  in  A.  3,  S.  2,  "  Talk  like  the  vulgar  sort  of 
market  men."  Drayton,  in  De  La  Poole  to  Queen  Mar- 
garet, says,  "With  the  base  vulgar  sort  to  win  his  fame." 

LEAN    FAMINE. 

Talbot  says,  in  A.  4,  S.  2,  "Lean  famine,  quartering 
steel  and  climbing  fire";  while  Drayton,  in  King  Henry  to 
Rosamond,  says,  "Nor  yet  did  pale  fear  or  lean  famine 
live." 

STRATAGEMS    OF   WAR. 

Talbot  says,  in  A.  4,  S.  5,  "To  tutor  thee  in  stratagems 
of  war";  while  in  Queen  Margaret,  Drayton  says,  "Expert 
in  all  the  stratagems  of  war." 

ILL-BODING   STARS. 

Talbot  says,  "But  0  malignant  and  ill-boding  stars"; 
while  Drayton,  in  Queen  Isabel  to  Richard  2,  says,  "And 
all  ill-boding  planets  by  consent." 

LIKE   A   HUNGRY   LION. 

Talbot  says,  "And  like  a  hungry  lion  did  commence"; 
while  Drayton,  in  Pol.  2,  p.  276,  says,  "Upon  the  envied 
French,  like  hungry  lions  flew." 


HENRY   THE    SIXTH,    PARTS    1,    2,    AND   3.  429 

TO   STOP   THE    EFFUSION   OF. 

Gloster  says,  in  A.  5,  S.  1,  ''  To  stop  effusion  of  our 
Christian  blood";  while  in  Agincourt,  Drayton  says,  "To 
stop  the  effusion  of  their  husband's  gore." 

CONDITIONS    OF   A    FRIENDLY    PEACE. 

King  Henry  says,  "To  draw  conditions  of  a  friendly 
peace";  while  in  Idea,  63,  Drayton  says,  "I  offer  free 
conditions  of  fair  peace." 

IN    EARNEST   OF. 

Pucelle  says,  A.  5,  S.  3,  "  In  earnest  of  a  further  benefit." 
Drayton,  in  Shore  to  Edward,  says,  "In  earnest  of  a 
greater  good." 

AS   IF   WITH    CIRCE. 

York  says,  "As  if  with  Circe  she  would  change  my 
shape";  while  Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  6,  St.  77,  says, 
"And  like  a  Circe  metamorphosest." 

CRAVE    A    PARLEY. 

Suffolk  says,  "We'll  crave  a  parleij";  and  Drayton,  in 
Idea,  63,  says,  "A  parley  now  I  crave." 

TO    SUFFER    SHIPWRECK. 

K.  Henry,  in  A.  5,  S.  5,  says,  "Either  to  suffer  ship- 
wreck or  arrive,"  while  Drayton,  in  Elegy  to  Sandys,  says, 
"  To  suffer  shipwreck  by  my  forward  pen," 

The  following  are  examples  in  Part  Second: 

RULES   THE    ROAST. 

Gloster  says,  in  A.  1,  S.  1,  "Suffolk,  the  new-made 
Duke  that  rules  the  roast" ;  while  Drayton,  in  Pol.  3,  p.  52, 
says,  "He  was  the  man  that  only  ruled  the  roast." 


430  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

WEAR   THE    DIADEM. 

York  says,  ''Nor  wear  the  diadem  upon  his  head." 
Drayton,  in  De  La  Poole  to  Queen  Margaret,  says,  "By 
true  descent,  to  wear  the  diadem  ^ 

HEAVED   IT   UP. 

Duchess  says,  in  A.  1,  S.  2,  "  And  having  both  together 
heaved  it  up."  Drayton,  in  Q.  Margaret,  says,  ''Even  to 
the  height  his  powerful  hand  upheaved." 

WEIGHTY   CAUSE. 

Duchess  says,  "With  my  confederates  in  this  weighty 
cause."  Drayton,  in  Pol.  1,  p.  5,  says,  "Like  some  great 
learned  Judge  to  end  a  weighty  cause."  Cardinal,  in  A.  3, 
S.  1,  says,  "What  counsel  give  you  in  this  weighty  cause?" 

ASSURES   ME. 

Warwick  says,  "My  heart  assures  me."  Drayton,  in 
Isabel  to  Mortimer,  says,  "My  glass  assures  me." 

BE    PATIENT,    GENTLE. 

Gloster  says,  in  A.  2,  S.  4,  "Be  patient,  gentle  Nell." 
Drayton,  in  Duke  Humphrey  to  Eleanor,  says,  "  Be  patient, 
gentle  heart." 

THE    NEEDY   COMMONS. 

York  says,  in  A.  3,  S.  1,  "  Because  I  would  not  tax  the 
needy  commons."  Drayton,  in  Duke  Humphrey  to 
Eleanor,  says,  "Upon  the  needy  commonalty  to  lay." 

VAUNTS   OF   NOBILITY. 

Suffolk  says,  "And  such  high  vaunts  of  his  nobility." 
Drayton,  in  Matilda,  says,  "To  vaunt  of  my  nobility  were 
vain." 


HENRY  THE   SIXTH,    PARTS    1,    2,    AND   3.  431 

RAVENOUS   WOLVES. 

Q.  Margaret  says,  "  For  he's  inclined  as  are  the  ravenous 
wolves";  while  Drayton,  in  Queen  Margaret,  says,  "As 
when  a  rout  of  ravenous  wolves  are  met." 

BASILISK   AND    KILL. 

K.  Henry  says,  in  A.  3,  S.  2,  "Come,  basilisk, and  kill 
the  innocent  gazer  with  thy  sight."  Drayton,  in  Mat.,  75, 
says,  "Like  as  the  basilisk  to  kill." 

AWKWARD    WINDS. 

Q.  Margaret  says,  "And  twice  by  awkward  wind  from 
England's  bank";  while  in  R.  2  to  Isabel,  Drayton  says, 
"  Driven  by  awkward  winds  and  boisterous  seas." 

BREATHLESS   CORPSE. 

K.  Henry  says,  "  Enter  his  chamber,  view  his  breathless 
corpse."  In  Idea,  47,  Drayton  says,  "Oft  hath  been 
proved  the  breathless  corpse  will  bleed." 

TIMELESS    DEATH. 

Q.  Margaret  says: 

"Then  you  belike  suspect  these  noblemen 
As  guilty  of  Duke  Humphrey's  timeless  death." 

While  in  Queen  Margaret,  Drayton  says: 

"A\Tiich  good  Duke  Humphrey  first  of  all  nuist  iiistc 
A\Tiose  timeless  death  interpreted  their  haste." 

In  Duke  Robert,  Drayton  says,  "Thy  strength  was 
buried  in  his  timeless  death." 


432  the  shakespeare  title. 

nevil's  race. 
Suffolk  says: 

"  Whose  fruit  thou  art, 
And  never  of  the  NeviVs  noble  race  J  ^ 

while   in   Owen   Tudor   to   Q.   Margaret,    Drayton   says, 
"  Warwick,  the  pride  of  Nevil's  haughty  race." 

mandrake's  groan. 

Suffolk  says,  "  Would  curses  kill,  as  doth  the  mandrake's 
groan";  while  Drayton,  in  Geraldine  to  H.  Howard,  says, 
"Mandrake's  dreadful  groan";  and  in  Nymphidia,  he  says, 
"By  the  mandrake's  dreadful  groan." 

BLACK   DESPAIR. 

K.  Henry  says,  in  A.  3,  S.  3,  "  And  from  his  bosom  purge 
this  black  despair";  while  Drayton,  in  Lady  Jane  to  Dud- 
ley, says,  '' Arm'd  against  black  despair  and  all  her  kind." 

o,  spectacle. 

First  Gent,  says,  in  A.  4,  S.  1,  "  0,  barbarous  and  bloody 
spectacle";  see  3  H.  6,  A.  2,  S.  5.  Drayton,  in  Barons'" 
Wars,  C.  2,  S.  67,  says,  "0,  spectacle,  ever  able  to  affright.'^ 

CLOUTED   SHOON. 

Cade  says,  in  A.  4,  S.  2,  "  Spare  none  but  such  as  go  in 
clouted  shoon";  while  in  Pol.  3,  p.  95,  Drayton  says,  "the 
club  and  clouted  shoon." 

RUDE   AND   MERCILESS. 

Messenger  says,  in  A.  4,  S.  4,  "  Of  hinds  and  peasants, 
rude  and  merciless."  Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  4,  S. 
43,  says,  "Whose  giddy  commons,  merciless  and  rude." 


HENRY  THE   SIXTH,    PARTS    1,    2,   AND   3.  433 

KENTISH   REBELS. 

Q.  Margaret  says,  "These  Kentish  rebels  would  be  soon 
appeased";  and  King  Henry  says,  ''Trust  not  the  Kentish 
rebels'^;  while  Drayton  makes  Margaret  say  in  De  La 
Poole  to  Q.  Margaret,  "A  Kentish  rebel,  a  base  upstart 
groom." 

CURSE   LIGHT   ON   YOU. 

Cade  says,  in  A.  4,  S.  7,  "God's  curse  light  on  you  all." 
Drayton,  in  Isabel  to  K.  Rich.  2,  says,  "  My  curse  light  on 
his  head." 

PUISSANT    POWER. 

Mess,  says,  in  A.  4,  S.  9,  "  The  Queen  from  France  hath 
brought  a  puissant  power";  Somerset  says,  "With  a 
puissant  and  a  mighty  power. '^  In  Barons'  Wars,  C.  2, 
in  the  Argument,  Drayton  says,  "  At  Burton's  bridge  the 
puissant  powers  are  met." 

GALLOW   GLASSES   AND    KERNES. 

Mess,  says,  "Of  Gallow  glasses  and  stout  Kernes."  In 
Her.  Epist.,  p.  176,  Drayton  says,  "To  land  the  Kernes 
and  Irish  gallow  glasses." 

THE  FLOWER  DE  LUCE  OF  FRANCE. 

York  says,  in  A.  5,  S.  1,  "On  which  I'll  toss  the  flower 
de  luce  of  France.''  Drayton,  in  Agincourt,  says,  "Which 
lately  lost  the  flower  de  luce  of  France." 

THE    RAMPANT   BEAR   AND   RAGGED    STAFF. 

Warwick  says,  "The  rampant  bear  chained  to  the 
ragged  staff."  Drayton,  in  De  La  Poole  to  Q.  Margaret, 
says,  "The  white  bear  rampant  and  the  ragged  staff." 


434  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

KITES   AND    CROWS. 

York  says,  "And  made  a  prey  of  carrion  kites  and 
crows";  while  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  2,  S.  67,  Drayton  says, 
"His  quartered  corse  of  kites  and  crows  devoured." 

IT   GRIEVES   MY   SOUL. 

Warwick  says,  in  A.  5,  S.  2,  "  It  grieves  my  soul  to  leave 
thee  unassailed."  In  Pol.  5,  p.  274,  Drayton  says,  "It 
grieves  my  zealous  soul." 

DEDICATE    TO. 

Y.  Clifford  says,  "He  that  is  truly  dedicate  to  war." 
Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  4,  S.  16,  says,  "  Such  as 
indeed  were  dedicate  to  arms." 

In  the  Third  Part,  some  of  the  expressions  are : 

THE   REGAL   SEAT, 

Warwick  says,  "And  this  the  regal  seat;  possess  it, 
York."  Drayton,  in  Agincourt,  says,  "Claiming  the 
regal  seat." 

ACCURSED    BE. 

Exeter  says,  "Accursed  be  he  that  seeks  to  make  them 
foes";  while  in  K.  Henry  to  Rosamond,  Drayton  says, 
"Accursed  be  that  heart,  that  tongue,  that  breath." 

PROTECTOR   OF  THE   REALM. 

Margaret  says,  "The  Duke  is  made  protector  of  the 
realm."  Drayton,  in  Q.  Margaret,  says,  "Was  both 
protector  of  the  realm  and  King." 


HENRY  THE  SIXTH,  PARTS  1,  2,  AND  3.  435 

MISERABLY   SLAIN, 

Rutland  says,  in  A.  1,  S.  3,  "He  be  as  miserably  slain 
as  I."  In  Barons'  Wars,  C.  6,  S.  64,  Drayton  says, 
"  Were  at  their  entrance  miserably  slain." 

MISERABLE    STATE. 

Q.  Margaret  says,  in  A.  1,  S.  4,  ''I  should  lament  thy 
miserable  state'';  while  Drayton,  in  Isabel  to  R.  2d,  says, 
''To  part  us  in  this  miserable  stated 

SINGLED    FORTH. 

Richard  says,  in  A.  2,  S.  1,  ''  And  watched  him  how  he 
singled  Clifford  forth";  while  m  King  John  to  Matilda, 
Drayton  says,  "  I  singled  forth  that  pleased  my  fancy  best." 

I    SEE    THREE    SUXS. 

Edward  says,  ''Dazzle  mine  eyes,  or  do  /  see  three 
sunsf"  In  Queen  Margaret,  Drayton  says,  "Three  suns 
were  seen,  that  instant  to  appear." 

BLAME    ME    XOT. 

Rich,  says,  "I  know  it  well.  Lord  Warw^ick,  blame  me 
not."  In  Mary  to  Brandon,  Draj^ton  says,  "Blame  me 
not,  Brandon";  and  in  Owen  Tudor  to  Q.  Cath.  he  says, 
"Blame  me  not,  madam." 

KNIT    HIS   ANGRY    BROW. 

Clifford  says,  in  A.  2,  S.  2,  "Thou  smiling,  while  he 
knit  his  angry  brow."  In  Mary  to  Brandon,  Drayton  says, 
"If  when  thou  com'st  I  knit  mine  angry  brow." 


436    ■  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

THINGS   ILL-GOT. 

K.  Henry  says,  "That  things  ill  got  have  ever  bad 
success."  In  Mooncalf,  Drayton  says,  "For  goods  ill- 
gotten  do  consume  as  fast." 

FOUL   STIGMATIC. 

Q.  Margaret  says,  "  But  hke  a  foul  misshapen  stigmatic." 
In  De  La  Poole  to  Q.  Marg't,  Drayton  says,  ''Foul,  ill- 
favor'd,  crook-back'd  stigmatic." 

EARTH    BE    DRUNKEN. 

Warwick  says,  in  A.  2,  S.  3,  "Then  let  the  earth  be 
drunken  with  our  blood";  while  in  Agincourt,  Drayton 
says,  "And  make  our  earth  drunk  with  English  gore." 

EMBROIDERED    CANOPY. 

K.  Henry  says,  in  A.  2,  S.  5,  "Than  doth  a  rich  em- 
broidered canopy";  while  in  Mary  to  Brandon,  Drayton 
says,  "  Under  a  rich  embroidered  canopy." 

DEPARTING   GROANS. 

Richard  says,  "A  deadly  groan,  like  life  and  death 
departing."  Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  4,  S.  45,  says, 
"And  for  her  accents,  sad  departing  groans." 

SWARM   LIKE   FLIES. 

Clifford  says,  in  A.  2,  S.  6,  "  The  common  people  swarm 
like  summer  flies";  while  in  Piers  Gaveston,  Drayton  says, 
"Thus  do  they  swarm  like  flies  about  the  brim." 

BRAKE   SHROUDED. 

1st  Keeper  says,  in  A.  3,  S.  1,  "  Under  this  thick  grown 
brake,  we'll  shroud  ourselves";  while  in  Piers  Gaveston, 
Drayton  says,  "Sits  shrouded  in  some  solitary  brake." 


HENRY  THE  SIXTH,  PARTS  1,  2,  AND  3.  437 

BROOK    DELAY. 

Lady  Gray  says,  in  A.  3,  S.  2,  ''Right  gracious  Lord,  I 
can  not  brook  delay."  In  Mary  to  Brandon,  Drayton  says, 
"How  ill  we  women  brook  delay." 

WEAR   THE    WILLOW    GARLAND. 

Bona  says,  in  A.  3,  S.  3,  ''I'll  wear  the  willow  garland 
for  his  sake."  In  Muses'  Elysium,  Drayton  says,  "The 
willow  garland  weareth." 

AT    UNAWARES. 

Warwick  says,  in  A.  4,  S.  2,  "At  unawares  may  beat 
down  Edward's  guard";  and  in  A.  4,  S.  4,  Queen  Eliza- 
beth says,  "Or  by  his  foes,  surprised  at  unawares."  In 
Barons'  Wars,  C.  5,  S.  58,  Drayton  says,  "Turning  the 
leaf,  he  found  at  unuwares." 

STANDS   THE    CASE. 

Gloster  says,  in  A.  4,  S.  5,  "Thus  stands  the  case"; 
while  in  Idea,  St.  2,  Drayton  says,  "So  stands  the  case 
with  me." 

LAUREL   CROWN. 

Clarence  says,  in  A.  4,  S.  6,  "  Adjudged  an  olive  branch 
and  laurel  crown";  while  in  the  4th  Eclogue,  Drayton 
says,  "The  oaken  garland  and  the  laurel  crown." 

MANGLED    BODY. 

Warwick  says,  in  A.  5,  S.  2,  "Why  ask  I  that  my 
mangled  body  shows."  In  Barons'  Wars,  C.  4,  St.  44, 
Drayton  says,  "In  mangled  bodies,  her  anatomy." 


438  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

SANDS   AND   ROCKS. 

Queen  Margaret  says,  in  A.  5,  S.  4,  "More  than  with 
ruthless  waves,  with  sands  and  rocks."  In  Barons'  Wars, 
C.  4,  St.  37,  Drayton  says,  "Mongst  rocks  and  sands  in 
danger  to  be  lost." 

I  desire  now  to  invite  the  reader's  particular  attention 
to  the  remarkable  similarity  of  expression  as  between  the 
author  of  the  third  scene  of  the  second  act  and  the  third 
scene  of  the  third  act  of  the  third  part  of  this  play,  and 
Drayton  in  his  Polyolbion,  Vol.  3,  page  74. 

In  the  second  act,  Edward,  addressing  Warwick,  says: 

"  I  throw  my  hands,  mine  eyes,  my  heart  to  thee, 
Thou  setter  up  and  plucker  down  of  kings!" 

and  in  the  third  act.  Queen  Margaret  says : 

"Peace,  impudent  and  shameless  Warwick,  peace, 
Proud  setter  up  and  puller  down  of  kings!" 

while  Drayton,  in  Pol.  3,  p.  74,  says: 

"Thus  fortune  to  his  end,  this  mighty  Warwick  brings, 
This  puissant  setter  up  and  puller  down  of  kings." 

and  in  Queen  Margaret  to  De  La  Poole,  he  says: 

"Proud  setter  up  and  puller  down  of  kings." 

Again,  in  the  second  scene  of  the  third  act,  Gloster  says : 

"  I  can  add  colors  to  the  cameleon ; 
Change  shapes  with  Proteus  for  advantages." 

while  in  Piers  Gaveston,  Drayton  says: 


HENRY  THE  SIXTH,  PARTS  1,  2,  AND  3.  439 

"Like  the  cameleon,  whilst  time  turns  the  hue, 
And  with  false  Proteus  put  on  sundry  shapes." 

In  the  sixth  scene  of  the  fifth  act,  Gloster  says : 

"  For  often  have  I  heard  my  mother  say, 
I  came  into  the  world  with  my  legs  forward, 
The  midwife  wondered;  and  the  women  cried, 
0  Jesus  bless  us,  he  is  born  with  teeth." 

In  Queen  Margaret  to  De  La  Poole,  Drayton  says 
(speaking  of  Gloster),  "Born  toothed  and  with  his  feet 
forward,"  and  a  little  farther  on,  "with  teeth  in  his  head." 

In  the  fourth  scene  of  the  first  act  of  the  Third  Part, 
York  says,  "My  ashes,  as  the  phoenix,  may  bring  forth"; 
while  Drayton,  in  Henry  Howard  to  Geraldine,  says,  "I 
will  renew  thee,  phoenix-like,  again," 

The  following  expressions  are  used  alike  by  one  of  the 
composers  of  the  play  and  Drayton: 

"  A  sort  of,  and  to  conclude,  and  yet  methinks,  as  free 
as  heart  could  wish,  but  now  of  late,  but  stay,  but  to  con- 
clude, content  thyself,  delays  breed  doubts,  how  say'st 
thou,  insulting  Knight,  nay,  be  not  angry,  proclamation 
made,  ravenous  wolf,  shepherd  swain,  silly  sheep,  think'st 
thou,  thirsting  after,  timeless  death,  unfeigned  love." 
Drayton's  favorite  expressions,  "when  as,"  "for  then  as," 
used  in  this  play,  also  betray  him. 

Words  used  once  only  in  this  play,  and  not  elsewhere 
used  in  any  of  the  other  plays,  and  used  also  by  Drayton, 
are  as  follows: 

"Ashy,  Atlas,  augmented,  ban-dogs,  behoof,  bemoaned, 
bested,  Bevis  of  Southampton,  bewrayed,  bloodthirsty, 
blotting,  certify,  choicely,  conditionally,  confusedly, 
cooped,  cornets,  dangerously,  Deborah,  Daedalus,  defend- 


440  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

ant,  deluded,  discerned,  divining,  easeful,  embroidered, 
enchantress,  erecting,  everliving,  exequies,  exorcisms, 
expulsed,  extinguish,  far-fet,  foot-stool,  forecast,  fraudful, 
guerdoned,  harbouring,  hearten,  hunger-starved,  ill-got, 
immortalized,  impairing,  imperiously,  intrenched,  invec- 
tive, leper,  lineally,  minotaurs,  mirthful,  muttered,  over- 
weening, overpass 'd,  overpeered,  Parisians,  Pendragon, 
procurator,  propounded,  quenchless,  quitting,  reproach- 
fully, rigorously,  Septentrion,  servility,  shaghaired,  sleight, 
sprawlest,  sturdy,  subversion,  subvert,  thirsting,  top- 
branch,  treacherously,  turmoiled,  unnaturally,  voiding, 
withstand." 

Words  used  twice  only  in  this  play  and  in  the  plays, 
and  also  used  by  Drayton,  are  as  follows : 

"Affy,  Amazonian,  attempting,  bereaved,  big-swoln, 
brown  bill,  charactered,  checkered,  commixtures,  corrosive, 
degraded,  disproportion  (as  a  verb),  double,  engirt,  entic- 
ing, erst,  fabulous,  forewarned,  gazers,  heroic,  ignobly,  ill 
boding,  infringed,  invocate,  luckless,  munition,  obloquy, 
o'ermatched,  overgone,  overrun,  peaceably,  pensive,  polit- 
icly, reasonless,  remorseless,  resident,  stigmatic,  struggling, 
threadbare,  tire,  tresses,  unconquered,  yelping." 

Drayton  also  uses  the  following  words  which  are  used 
in  this  play  and  three  times  only  in  all  the  plays :  "  Cover- 
ture, deathsman,  futherance,  remorseless,  ruinate,  treble, 
younger." 

When  the  reader  considers  that  Michael  Drayton  was 
thoroughly  familiar  with  the  doings  of  kings,  nobles,  and 
commonalty  in  that  period  of  English  and  French  history 
dramatized  in  the  several  parts  of  this  play,  and  that  he 
had  celebrated  the  amours  and  quarrels  of  the  most  notable 
participants  in  rhyme,  he  will  be  the  more  inclined,  after 


HENRY  THE  SIXTH,  PARTS  1,  2,  AND  3.  441 

careful  examination,  to  believe,  with  me,  that  Michael 
Drayton  was  a  principal  composer  of  Henry  the  Sixth. 
He  is  full  of  poetry,  of  love,  of  war,  of  history,  of  geography, 
of  religion,  of  the  lore  of  fairy  freaks  and  fairyland. 

Thomas  Dekker  appears  in  the  second  scene  of  act 
second  of  1  Henry  6th;  in  part  of  scene  first,  act  first,  of 
2  Henry  6th;  in  the  third  and  fourth  scenes  of  the  second 
act;  in  the  third,  sixth,  and  tenth  scenes  of  the  fourth  act; 
and  in  the  first  scene  of  the  fifth  act,  of  the  Third  Part. 
I  trace  him  by  these  phrases  peculiar  to  him,  as  found  in 
his  plays,  as  for  instance,  "  I  muse,  since  there's  no  remedy, 
heart's  content,  imprimis,  I  fear  me,  a  fig  for,  and  so 
farewell,  it  was  never  merry  world,  by  my  faith,  0  gross, 
and,  to  speak  truth,  how^  now,  what  news.  Mass,  like  an 
ostrich,  ay,  by  my  faith." 

The  third  scene  of  the  first  act  of  the  First  Part  is,  in 
my  opinion,  the  sole  work  of  Anthony  Monday,  the  man 
with  the  'Niger's  heart."  The  reader  will  remember  that 
the  play  of  Sir  John  Oldcastle  has  been  identified  by  Hens- 
lowe's  Diary  as  the  work  of  Monday,  Drayton,  Wilson, 
and  Hathaway.  Monday  opens  the  play  with  a  quarrel 
and  attempt  at  fighting  between  the  followers  of  Lord 
Herbert  and  Lord  Powis.  There  is  a  great  tumult.  As 
they  are  fighting,  the  mayor  and  townsmen  enter,  and  the 
mayor  orders  a  proclamation  to  be  read,  commanding  the 
peace  and  dispersing  the  parties.  So  in  Henry  the  Sixth, 
Gloster's  men  in  blue  coats  and  Winchester's  men  in 
tawny  coats  quarrel,  and  the  mayor  enters  with  officers 
and  makes  a  proclamation  similar  to  that  made  by  the 
Mayor  of  Hereford. 

In  the  scene  in  Henry  the  Sixth,  the  words  are  as 
follows: 


442  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

"  Win.   Gloster,  thou'lt  answer  this  before  the  pope. 
Gh.  Winchester  goose!  I  cry — a  rope!  a  rope! 

Now  beat  them  hence,  why  do  you  let  them  stay? 

Thee  I'll  chase  hence,  thou  wolf  in  sheep's  array. — 

Out,  tawny  coats! — out,  scarlet  hypocrite! 

CHere  Gloster's  men  beat  out  the  Cardinal's  men,  and 

enter,  in  the  hurly-burh-,  the  Mayor  of  London  and  his 

Officers.) 

May.    Fie,  lords !  that  you,  being  supreme  magistrates, 
Thus  contmiieliously  should  break  the  peace! 
Glo.    Peace,  Mayor!  thou  knowest  little  of  my  wrongs. 
Here's  Beaufort,  that  regards  not  God  nor  king, 
Hath  here  distrained  the  Tower  to  his  use. 
Win.    Here's  Gloster  too,  a  foe  to  citizens: 

One  that  still  motions  war,  and  never  peace, 
O'ercharging  yom^  free  purses  with  large  fines; 
That  seeks  to  overthrow  religion, 
Because  he  is  protector  of  the  realm : 
And  would  have  armour,  here,  out  of  the  Tower, 
To  crown  himself  king,  and  suppress  the  prince. 
Glo.    I  will  not  answer  thee  with  words,  but  blows. 
(Here  the}'  skirmish  again.) 
May.   Nought  rests  for  me,  in  this  tumultuous  strife, 
But  to  make  open  proclamation. — 
Come,  officer:  as  loud  as  thou  canst  cry. 
Off.    All  manner  of  men,  assembled  here  in  arms  this 
day,  against  God's  peace,  and  the  king's,  we  charge 
and  command  you,  in  his  highness'  name,  to  repair 
to  3'our  several  dwelling-places;  and  not  to  wear, 
handle,   or  use,   any  sword,   weapon,   or   dagger, 
henceforward,  upon  pain  of  death. 
Glo.    Cardinal,  I'll  be  no  breaker  of  the  law; 

But  we  shall  meet,  and  break  our  minds  at  large. 
Win.    Gloster,  we'll  meet,  to  thy  dear  cost  be  sure : 

Thy  heart-blood  I  will  have  for  this  day's  work." 

And  in  the  scene  in  Oldcastle,  the  words  are  these: 


HENRY  THE  SIXTH,  PARTS  1,  2,  AND  3.  443 

"  (As  they  are  fighting,  enter  the  Mayor  of  Hereford, 
his  officers  and  townsmen  with  clubs.) 
May.   My  lords,  as  you  are  liegemen  to  the  crown. 
True  noblemen,  and  subjects  to  the  king. 
Attend  his  highness'  proclamation, 
Commanded  by  the  Judges  of  Assize, 
For  keeping  peace  at  this  assembly. 
Her.  Good  master.  Mayor  of  Hereford,  be  brief. 
May.   Serjeant,  without  the  ceremonies  of  0  Yes, 

Pronounce  aloud  the  proclamation. 
Ser.  The  King's  Justices,  perceiving  what  public  mis- 
chief may  ensue  this  private  quarrel,  in  his  Majes- 
ty's name  do  stoutly  charge  and  command  all 
persons,  of  what  degree  soever,  to  depart  this  city 
of  Hereford,  except  such  as  are  bound  to  give 
attendance  at  this  assize,  and  that  no  man  presume 
to  wear  any  weapon,  especially  Welsh  hooks  and 
forest  bills." 

The  style  is  that  of  Monday,  and  in  both  plays  his 
flings  at  the  papacy  are  undisguised.  Besides,  in  the 
scene  now  under  consideration,  an  expression  is  used  pre- 
cisely like  that  used  by  Monday  in  the  play  of  John  a  Kent, 
viz.,  "I'll  be  your  Warrantize." 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

RICHARD  THE  THIRD  AND  KING  JOHN  EXAMINED. 

"An  honest  tale  speeds  best  being  plainly  told  J' 

—Richard  Third,  iv,  4. 

The  tragedy  of  Richard  the  Third,  when  it  was  first 
published  in  1597,  for  Andrew  Wise,  contained  no  refer- 
ence to  any  author.  When  again  pubHshed  in  1598,  for 
Andrew  Wise,  the  title  page  contained  the  following:  "By 
William  Shake-speare." 

It  should  be  remarked  that  in  1602,  Wise  had  another 
edition  printed  with  these  words  added:  "Newly  aug- 
mented. By  William  Shakespeare."  It  was  again  pub- 
lished in  1605  with  the  same  words,  the  Shakespeare  being 
hyphenated. 

Then  it  appeared  in  the  Folio  of  1623,  with  additions, 
particularly  in  scene  second  of  the  first  act.  Who  pre- 
pared and  put  in  these  additions?  They  were  not  in  the 
quartos  at  all. 

In  this  connection  two  very  singular  facts  appear,  to 
which  very  little  attention  has  been  paid.  One  of  them, 
the  last  one  mentioned,  has  never  been  noticed.  Hens- 
lowe's  Diary  shows  that  in  the  year  1602  Henslowe  paid 
to  Benjamin  Jonson  ten  pounds  for  a  play  which  Henslowe 
calls  "Richard  Crookback."  The  entry  in  the  Diary,  at 
page  223,  is  as  follows:  "Lent  unto  bengemy  Johnsone, 
at  the  apoyntment  of  E.  Alleyn  and  Wm  Birde,  the  24  of 
June  1602,  in  earneste  of  a  boocke  called  Richard  crock- 
backe,  and  for  new  adicyons  for  Jeronymo  the  some  of 
XII." 


RICHARD   THE   THIRD   AND    KING   JOHN.  445 

The  other  fact  appears  in  the  sixth  volume  of  "  Thomas 
Hey\\^ood's  Dramatic  Works, ' '  pubhshed  in  1874  by  Pear- 
son, at  page  352.  Hej^^ood  there  inserts  a  copy  of  a 
prologue  and  epilogue  written  by  himself  and  used  in  the 
acting  of  Richard  the  Third.  Heywood  prefaces  the 
prologue  with  the  following: 

"A  young  witty  lad  playing  the  part  of  Richard  the 
Third,  at  the  Red  Bull,  the  author,  because  he  was  inter- 
ested in  the  play,  to  encourage  him,  wrote  him  this  pro- 
logue and  epilogue:  'The  boy,  the  speaker.'  The  pro- 
logue begins  thus: 

'  If  any  wonder  by  what  magic  charm, 
Richard  the  third  is  shrunk  up  like  his  arm; 
And  where  in  fulness  you  expected  him. 
You  see  me  only  crawling  like  a  limb 
Or  piece  of  that  known  fabric  and  no  more, 
When  he  so  often  hath  been  view'd  before.'  '• 

How  Heywood,  as  an  author,  was  interested  in  this 
play,  he  does  not  explain.  He  ma}^  have  referred  to  the 
True  Tragedy  of  Richard  the  Third,  of  which  he  may  have 
been  the  author,  or  he  may  have  been  a  collaborator  in 
the  making  of  the  Shake-speare  play.  WTiatever  relation, 
if  any,  either  Jonson  or  Heywood  had  with  the  play  of 
Richard  the  Third,  which  we  are  now  considering,  my 
examination  and  study  of  the  play  leads  me  to  believe 
that  whether  Jonson  and  Heywood  had  or  had  not  a  part 
in  it,  Michael  Drayton,  Thomas  Dekker,  and  John  Webster 
were  concerned  in  the  composition  of  it. 

The  Draytonian  expressions  are,  ''A  plague  upon;  I 
humbly  take  my  leave;  I  will  resolve  you;  God  wot;  I 
doubt  not  but;  No  marvel;  0  bloody;  To  make  amends; 
would  to  God." 


446  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

The  Draytonian  words  found  only  once  in  this  play  and 
in  none  of  the  other  plays,  are:  ''Bedashed,  blindly, 
causer,  encompasseth,  circling,  de^\7■,  dimming,  eavesdrop- 
per, ferryman,  high  reared,  libels,  light  foot,  nonage,  obse- 
quiously, opprobriously,  outshining,  revolving,  spicery, 
and  straitly."  Three  words,  "  disgracious,  re-edified, 
underhand,"  are  found  in  Drayton  and  this  play  and  twice 
only  in  all  the  plays. 

Some  of  the  identical  phrases  are  herewith  set  out: 

In  A.  1,  S.  1,  Gloster  says,  "  Grim-visaged  war  hath 
smoothed  his  wrinkled  front";  while  Drayton,  in  Pol. 
1,  p.  193,  says,  ''Yet  with  grim-visaged  war,  when  he  her 
shores  did  greet." 

Gloster  says,  "  A  bonny  eye,  a  passing  pleasing  tongue," 
while  Drayton,  in  Idea,  42,  says,  "Some  say  I  have  a 
passing  pleasing  strain." 

Hastings  says,  "And  his  physicians  fear  him  mightily," 
while  Drayton,  in  Pol.  2,  p.  47,  says,  "And  mightily  doth 
fear." 

In  the  second  scene,  Gloster  says,  "Is  not  the  causer 
of  the  timeless  deaths,"  while  in  Duke  Robert,  Drayton 
says,  "Thy  strength  was  buried  in  his  timeless  death." 

In  Act  2,  Scene  3,  Citizen  says,  "For  emulation  now, 
who  shaU  be  nearest,"  while  Drayton,  in  Piers  Gaveston, 
says,  "For  emulation  ever  did  attend." 

In  Act  3,  Scene  2,  Hastings  says,  "What  news,  what 
news  in  this  our  tottering  State?"  while  Drayton,  in 
Barons'  Wars,  C.  1,  S.  5,  says,  "Which,  like  an  earth- 
quake, rent  the  tottering  state." 

In  Scene  4,  Gloster  says,  "  Upon  my  body  with  their 
hellish  charms";  while  Drayton,  in  Mooncalf,  says,  "In 
wreaths  contorted,  nmmbling  hellish  charms." 


RICHARD    THE    THIRD    AND    KING    JOHN.  447 

Hastings  says,  ''"\Mio  builds  his  hopes  in  air  of  your 
fair  looks";  while  Drayton,  in  Idea,  63,  says,  ''I  build 
my  hopes  a  world  beyond  the  sky." 

In  Scene  5,  Gloster  says,  "'  And  bestial  appetite  in  change 
of  lust";  while  Drayton,  in  Piers  Gaveston,  says,  "But 
what  might  please  my  bestial  appetite." 

In  Scene  7,  Buckingham  says,  "This  general  applause 
and  cheerful  shout,"  while  in  Matilda,  S.  6,  Drayton  says, 
"The  wife  of  Shore  wins  general  applause." 

Buckingham  says,  "And  almost  shouldered  in  the 
swallowing  gulf,"  while  in  Pol.  3,  p.  8,  Drayton  says> 
"Into  that  swallowing  gulf,  which  seems  as  it  would 
draw." 

In  A.  4,  S.  1,  Queen  Elizabeth  says,  "To  feed  my 
humor,  wish  thyself  no  harm,"  while  in  Drayton's  dedica- 
tion to  Harmony,  he  says,  "To  feed  m}'^  vain  humor." 

Queen  Elizabeth  also  says,  "  Whom  envy  hath  immured 
within  your  walls,"  while  Drayton,  in  De  La  Poole  to 
Q.  Margaret,  says,  "To  rouse  the  French,  within  these 
walls  immured." 

In  Scene  4,  Richard  says,  "Wrong  not  her  birth," 
while  Drayton,  in  Matilda,  70,  says,  "Wrong  not  thy  fair 
youth." 

Richard  says,  "To  high  promotions  and  great  dignity," 
while  Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  1,  S.  13,  says,  "The 
seignories  and  high  promotion." 

Richard  says,  "  She  comes  again,  transformed  to  orient 
pearl,"  while  Drayton,  in  Pol.  3,  p.  193,  says,  "As  though 
her  wat'ry  path  were  paved  with  orient  pearl." 

In  A.  6,  S.  2,  Richard  says,  "Lines  of  fair  comfort  and 
encouragement,"  while  in  Pol.  3,  p.  9,  Drayton  says,  "that 
I  should  receive  much  comfort  and  encouragement  therein." 


448  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Richard  says,  ''In  God's  name,  cheerly  on,"  while  in 
Pol.  3,  p.  217,  Drayton  says,  "Yet  cheerly  on,  my  Muse, 
no  whit  at  all  dismayed." 

In  A.  5,  S.  3,  Ghost  says,  "Think  how  thou  stab'st  me 
in  my  prime  of  youth,"  while  Drayton,  in  Pol.  2,  p.  14, 
says,  "In  my  prime  of  youth." 

Ghost  says,  "And  Richard  falls  in  height  of  all  his 
pride,"  while  Drayton,  in  Pol.  2,  p.  144,  says,  "In  her 
height  of  pride." 

Drayton  and  one  of  the  writers  of  the  play  also  use  the 
word  "annoy"  as  a  noun.  One  uses  the  phrase  "seat 
royal,"  and  the  other,  "the  roj^al  seat."  Richard  says, 
"Delay  leads  impotent  and  snail-paced  beggary,"  while 
Drayton  says,  "delay  breeds  doubt."  The  Duchess  says, 
"That  my  woe-wearied  tongue  is  still  and  mute,"  while 
Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  6,  S.  95,  says,  "Her  woe- 
tied  tongue,  but  when  she  once  could  free."  The  Duchess 
says,  "Thy  age  confirm'd,  proud,  subtle,  sly  and  bloody," 
while  Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  5,  S.  6,  says,  "A 
man,  grave,  subtle,  stout  and  eloquent."  Richard  says, 
"All  unavoided  is  the  doom  of  destiny,"  while  Drayton, 
in  Agincourt,  says,  "0  powerful  doom  of  unavoided  fate," 
and  in  Cromwell,  he  says,  "  But  0  !  what  man  his  destiny 
can  shun?"  Richard  says,  "devised  at  first,"  while 
Drayton,  in  Matilda,  53,  says,  "Sure  first  devised." 

Another  Draytonian  peculiarity  is  noticeable  in  the 
accenting  of  the  word  "aspect,"  heretofore  referred  to. 
Thus  Anne  says,  "whose  ugly  and  unnatural  aspect." 
Now  this  very  word  is  a  part  of  the  addition  made  to  the 
quarto  in  the  Folio.  The  same  word  will  be  found  later  on 
in  Gloster's  speech  in  the  same  act  and  scene,  where  he 
says,  "shamed  their  aspects  with  store  of  childish  drops," 


RICHARD    THE    THIRD    AND    KIXG    JOHN.  449 

and  this  speech  is  also  a  part  of  the  addition  to  the  Foho. 
Unless,  therefore,  some  contemporary  dramatist  so  pro- 
nomiced  and  used  the  word,  it  would  be  fair  to  presume 
that  Drayton  made  the  additions  to  the  Folio.  That  such 
additions  were  made  by  some  one  after  Shaksper's  death 
is  very  clear.  Collier  says,  in  his  introduction  to  the  plays, 
that  "  with  respect  to  the  additions  in  the  Folio  of  1623, 
we  have  no  means  of  ascertaining  whether  they  formed 
part  of  the  original  play.  Our  text  is  that  of  the  Folio, 
with  due  notice  of  all  the  chief  variations."  He  further 
adds,  in  the  same  introduction,  that  "Malone  was  of  the 
opinion  that  Shakespeare  wrote  Richard  the  Third  in 
1593,  but  did  not  adduce  a  particle  of  evidence  and  none 
in  fact  exists." 

Passing  from  Drayton,  Dekker's  connection  with  the 
play  can  be  traced  by  the  following  exclamations  and 
phrases  used  familiarly  by  him:  "Ay,  prithee  peace;  but 
God  be  thanked;  but  leaving  this;  cry  mercy;  go  current; 
go  to;  God  he  knows;  gramercy;  high  imperial;  I  cry 
thee,  mercy  then;  I  cry  you  mercy;  I  fear  me;  I  muse; 
Let  us  to't,  pell  mell;  pitchers  have  ears;  saw'st  thou; 
seldom  or  never;  take  heed;  that  as  I  am  a  Christian; 
tut,  tut;  well,  let  that  rest;  what  news  abroad." 

Single  words  used  once  only  in  the  plays  and  by  Dekker, 
are:  "Cacodaemon,  intelligence,  pewfellow,  prodigality, 
rooting." 

There  are  two  words  used  in  this  play  and  also  used  by 
Dekker  which  especially  attracted  my  attention.  One  is 
''keycold,"  used  by  Aime  in  Scene  2  of  Act  1,  thus:  ''  Poor 
keycold  figure  of  a  holy  king."  It  is  also  used  in  Tarquin 
and  Lucrece  at  line  1774,  thus:  "And  then  in  keycold 
Lucrece'  bleeding  stream";  while  in  Satiro-mastix,  Dekker 


450  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

causes  Sir  Quintilian  to  say,  "For  fear  your  wise  brains 
take  keycold."  I  can  not  find  this  word  keycold  in  the 
writings  of  any  contemporary. 

The  word  ''peise"  is  another  unusual  word  uttered  by 
Richmond,  in  Scene  3  of  Act  5.  He  says,  "Lest  leaden 
slmiibers  peise  me  down  to-morrow."  Dekker  uses  it 
thus  in  Fortunatus,  A.  2.  S.  2. 

Webster's  participation  in  this  play  does  not  seem  to 
be  large.  I  trace  him  by  the  expressions,  "I  misdoubt; 
I  will  love  her  everlastingly;  I'll  not  meddle  with  it.  this 
palpable  de^'ice."     Act  3,  Scene  6,  appears  to  be  his. 

As  to  Francis  Bacon,  if  he  had  anything  to  do  with 
this  play  at  all,  it  could  only  have  been  by  a  revision  of  it. 

The  Life  and  Death  of  King  John  made  its  first  appear- 
ance in  the  Folio  of  1623,  but  in  the  years  1591,  1611,  and 
1622,  a  play  called  "  the  first  and  second  part  of  the  trouble- 
some reign  of  John,  King  of  England"  was  printed.  The 
issue  of  1591  was  not  ascribed  to  any  one,  but  that  of  1611 
had  on  the  title  page  the  letters  "  W.  Sh"  and  that  of  1622 
had  on  it  "  W.  Shakespeare."  Steevens  averred  that  the 
ascription  to  Shakespeare  was  fraudulent.  Dr.  Farmer 
claimed  that  WiUiam  Rowley  wrote  the  play;  and  Pope 
was  of  the  opinion  that  it  was  written  by  Shakespeare 
and  Rowley. 

The  man  or  men  who  wrote  "The  Troublesome  Reign" 
were  haters  of  Roman  Catholicism,  for  in  the  play,  as 
Collier  has  shown,  "the  monks  and  nuns  are  turned  into 
ridicule  and  the  indecency  and  licentiousness  of  their 
lives  exposed." 

The  present  play,  if  carefully  examined,  shows  that 
two  of  the  makers  or  revisers  were  Michael  Drayton  and 
Thomas  Dekker.     It   is  in  their  style   and  it  embodies 


RICHARD   THE    THIRD    AND    KING    JOHN.  451 

their  phrases  and  expressions.  I  will  give,  as  to  each,  a 
few  examples  to  identify  them. 

Identical  expressions  found  in  Drayton  and  in  King 
John  are  as  follow^s:  "A  muzzled  bear;  adverse  wdnds; 
arguments  of  love;  arms  invasive;  barbarous  ignorance; 
be  ruled  by  me;  cheerful  eyes;  closely  in;  come  tripping; 
gentry  of  the  land;  groveling  lies;  he  intendeth;  heaven 
knows;  I  conjure  thee;  I  find;  in  the  meantime;  jaws  of 
danger;  linked  together;  possession  of  my  bosom ;  slippery 
place;  speedy  messenger;  the  curse  of  Rome;  the  latest 
breath;  to  the  disposing  of."  Words  used  only  once  in 
the  plays  and  used  in  this  play,  and  also  by  Drayton,  are : 
"  Cincture,  cockered,  dispossessed,  fleshly,  glorified,  gracing, 
groveling,  harbored,  incessantly,  inglorious,  invasion,  ran- 
sacking, sinew^ed,  unattempted."  The  word  "aspect"  is 
also  wrongly  accented,  just  as  Drayton  used  it. 

Exclamations  pointing  to  Dekker  are,  in  part,  as  fol- 
lows: "And  so  farewell;  beshrew  thy  very  heart;  by  my 
faith;  come,  come;  Godamercy,  fellow;  I  am  amazed;  I 
muse;  in  brief;  zounds."  Identical  phrases,  in  part,  are: 
"Dogged  spies;  dost  thou  understand  me;  'foresaid; 
hanged  and  quartered ;  I  was  never  so ;  in  likeness  of  a  new- 
trimmed  bride;  to  make  a  more  requital."  The  Bastard, 
in  Act  2,  Scene  2,  is  made  to  say :  "  Zounds,  I  was  never  so 
bethumped  with  words  since  I  first  called  my  brother's 
father  dad,"  while  Dekker,  in  1  H.  W.,  A.  4,  S.  2,  says, 
"  God's  life,  I  was  never  so  thrummed  since  I  w^as  a  gentle- 
man." Among  the  words  used  once  only  and  also  by 
Dekker  are  "congeal,  convertite,  and  rondure." 

As  in  Richard  the  Third,  if  Bacon  had  anything  to  do 
with  this  play,  it  could  only  have  been  as  a  hasty  shaper 
or  reviser  of  it;  I  can  discover  no  trace  of  his  style  therein. 


CHAPTER  XXXV. 

HENRY  THE  EIGHTH  AND  THE  TWO  GENTLEMEN  OF  VERONA 

EXAMINED. 

"Every  why  hath  a  where] ore." 

—Comedy  of  Errors,  ii,  2. 

In  the  investigation  of  the  authorship  of  the  play  of 
Henry  the  Eighth,  the  reader  and  I  should  first  turn  our 
attention  to  the  Diary  of  Philip  Henslowe.  So  far  as  is 
now  known,  this  play  made  its  first  appearance  in  print  in 
the  Folio  of  1623.  Of  course,  the  commentators,  having  no 
facts  or  circumstances  favorable  to  its  composition  by 
Shaksper  to  guide  them,  have  indulged  in  conjectures  as 
to  the  date  of  its  composition.  Collier  maintains  and 
insists  that  it  was  written  in  1604.  Dr.  Johnson,  Malone, 
and  the  earlier  commentators  assign  the  original  date  to 
1602,  and  they  assert  that  additions  were  made  to  it  in 
1613.  To  support  this  theory  as  to  the  additions,  they 
take  the  position  that  it  must  have  been  acted  first  during 
the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  and  that  after  her  death  on  the 
24th  of  March,  1602-3,  Ben  Jonson  wrote  the  prologue 
and  part  of  Cranmer's  speech  in  the  last  scene.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  eulogy  on  King  James,  which  is 
blended  with  the  panegyric  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  was 
annexed  to  the  play  after  the  king  had  ascended  the  throne. 

While  the  primary  object  of  this  chapter  is  not  to  fix 
the  exact  date  of  the  production  of  Henry  the  Eighth, 
yet,  when  connected  with  the  question  of  the  authorship, 
it  becomes  a  very  important  matter.  An  examination  of 
Henslowe's   Diary  shows   that   while   no   play  under   the 


HENRY  THE  EIGHTH:   TWO  GENTLEMEN  OF  VERONA.  453 

distinctive  name  of  Henry  the  Eighth  appears  therein, 
yet  a  play  does  appear  under  the  title  of  ''the  Rising  of 
Cardinal  Wolsey,"  as  to  which  Henslowe  went  to  a  very 
great  and  extraordinary  expense — over  one  hundred 
pounds — in  its  preparation  for  the  stage,  and  four  very 
competent  and  learned  dramatists  were  employed  by  him 
in  its  composition.  These  were  Michael  Drayton,  Anthony 
Monday,  Henry  Chettle,  and  Wentworth  Smyth.  The 
first  entry  will  be  found  at  page  202  of  the  Diary,  and  its 
exact  reading  is  as  follows:  "Lent  unto  Roberte  shawe, 
to  lend  unto  hary  Chettell  and  Antonye  Mondaye,  and 
Mihell  Drayton,  in  earnest  of  a  boocke  called  the  Rissenge 
of  carnowlle  Wolsey  the  10  of  Octobr  1601  xxxx  s."  At 
page  203,  the  following  entry  occurs:  "Lent  unto  the 
companye  the  9  of  Novmbr  to  pay  unto  Mr  Mondaye  and 
Harry  Chettell,  in  pt  payment  of  a  boocke  called  the 
Risynge  of  Carnowlle  Wollsey  the  some  of  x  s."  And 
again,  at  page  204,  the  following  entry  will  be  found :  "  Lent 
unto  the  company  the  12  of  Novmbr  1601  to  pay  unto 
Antony  Mondaye  and  harey  Chettell,  mihell  Drayton  and 
Smythe  in  full  paymente  of  the  first  pt  of  carnowll  Wollsey 
the  some  of  three  pounds." 

Not  only  did  Henslowe  pay  a  handsome  sum  for  this 
play,  an  unusual  thing  for  him,  but  it  appears  that  the 
play  was  licensed  piecemeal  by  the  Master  of  the  Rolls, 
and  as  Collier  states  and  as  the  Diary  shows,  "a  further 
point  established  by  the  same  authority  is  that  Henslowe 
expended  an  unusual  amount  in  getting  up  the  drama. 
On  the  tenth  of  August  1601,  he  paid  no  less  than  twenty- 
one  pounds  for  velvet,  satin,  and  taffeta  for  the  dresses,  a 
sum  equal  now  to  about  one  hundred  pounds.  Upon  the 
costumes  only,  in  the  whole,  considerably  more  than  two 


454  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

hundred  pounds  were  laid  out,  reckoning  the  value  of 
money  in  1601  at  about  five  times  its  value  at  present." 

I  call  the  reader's  attention,  in  this  connection,  to  the 
remarks  of  the  learned  editor  of  Verplanck's  Illustrated 
Shakespeare  as  to  the  costume  and  decorations  required 
for  the  proper  staging  of  this  play.  ''  The  reign  of  Henry 
the  Eighth,"  he  says,  ''is  admirably  fitted  for  a  drama  of 
show  and  splendor,  as  well  in  magnificence  and  variety  of 
costume  and  decoration  as  in  architectural  and  scenic 
embellishments.  The  play  was  probably  wTitten  originally 
with  a  view  to  this  very  purpose,  and  it  has  kept  its  place 
on  the  English  stage  by  continual  revivals  with  increased 
cost  and  splendor."  These  remarks  of  the  commentator 
are  admirably  fitted  to  the  play  of  Cardinal  Wolsey,  and 
the  mere  question  of  name  is  the  only  matter  of  difference 
to  be  explained.  Wolsey  is  the  central  figure  in  the  play 
of  Henry  the  Eighth.  Henslowe  was  very  apt  to  call  a 
play  purchased  by  him  by  the  name  of  one  of  the  char- 
acters. I  think  that  he  did  so  as  to  Love's  Labor's  Lost, 
designated  as  "Beromie,"  and  Richard  the  Second,  desig- 
nated as  "Piers  of  Exton."  Even  the  Shakespeare  com- 
mentators seem  to  be  of  the  opinion  that  the  pla}^  was  put 
upon  the  stage  in  1613,  when  the  Globe  Theatre  was  burned, 
under  the  name  of  ''All  is  true." 

The  Baconian  claim  that  this  play  was  a  continuation 
by  Bacon  of  a  historical  series,  following  his  Henry  the 
Seventh,  while  an  ingenious  theory,  is  unsupported  by  the 
style  of  the  play. 

I  call  the  reader's  attention,  in  this  connection,  to  the 
peculiarities  of  the  versification,  noticed  by  the  various 
editors  and  felicitously  described  by  Verplanck  "as  care- 
fully avoiding  the  pause  at  the  end  of  lines,  and  overflow- 


HENRY  THE  EIGHTH :   TWO  GENTLEMEN  OF  VERONA.  455 

ing  the  regular  rhythm  with  added  syllables, — not  as  in 
other  plays  in  a  single  line  or  two,  here  and  there,  but  in 
long  passages  and  apparently  on  some  system."  One 
critic  says,  ''If  the  reader  will  turn  to  Act  2,  Scene  4,  he 
will  see  that  many  of  the  lines  end  with  particles,  and  that 
scarcely  one  of  the  lines  is  marked  by  a  pause  at  the  ter- 
mination. Many  other  passages  could  be  pointed  out 
with  this  peculiarity." 

It  will  not  be  seriously  contended  by  any  students  of 
Bacon's  style  that  such  manner  of  versification  was  a 
peculiarity  of  his.  Neither  is  there  anything  in  the  fact 
that  Bacon's  prose  history  of  Henry  the  Eighth  was  left 
unfinished.  In  looking  over  his  works,  the  reader  will 
notice  that  he  left  many  subjects  unfinished.  In  other 
words,  he  would  begin  on  a  particular  subject  and,  before 
proceeding  very  far,  totally  abandon  it.  Besides  his 
Henry  the  Eighth,  I  notice  that,  among  others,  his  Essays, 
civil  and  moral,  his  New  Atlantis,  his  Advertisement 
touching  a  holy  war  and  his  history  of  Great  Britain,  were 
not  perfected.  He  did  not  always  finish  what  he  projected. 
Bacon  may  have  added  parts  of  Cranmer's  speech  and  a 
few  other  passages  prior  to  the  staging  of  the  play  in  1613, 
but  the  great  body  of  the  play  was  evidently  not  composed 
by  him.  My  own  opinion  is  that  Drayton  wrote  all  of  the 
Cranmer  speech  and  the  greater  part  of  the  play. 

Because  Drayton's  style  and  Drayton's  phrases,  as 
well  as  those  of  Chettle,  appear  in  this  play,  it  is  fair  to 
presume  that  the  play  called  "The  Rising  of  Cardinal 
Wolsey,"  on  which  so  much  money  was  spent  by  the 
penurious  Henslowe,  was  the  basis  or  groundwork  for  the 
revised  play  of  1613.  In  that  original  composition  Bacon 
could  have  had  no  hand,  for  he  would  not  have  worked  on 


456  THE   SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

a  play  in  collaboration  with  the  four  poets  named  by 
Henslowe.  He  could  not  have  done  so  without  creating 
more  or  less  gossip  among  the  players  and  poets  as  to  his 
participation  in  the  business  of  playwTiting  for  theatrical 
managers. 

There  has  always  been  a  feeling  of  doubt  and  unrest 
among  the  best  commentators  and  critics — those  who  have 
never  doubted  Shaksper's  right  to  the  play — as  to  the 
authorship  of  this  play.  Spedding,  who  was  a  brilliant 
■wTiter  and  the  best  and  most  careful  biographer  of  Bacon, 
was  of  the  opinion  that  the  play  of  Henry  the  Eighth 
was  written  by  several  collaborators.  He  assigns  to  John 
Fletcher  the  third  and  fourth  scenes  of  the  first  act;  the 
first  and  second  scenes  of  the  second  act;  all  of  act  three 
(except  the  second  scene)  to  the  king's  exit;  and  all  the 
rest  of  the  play  except  the  first  scene  of  act  five.  I  pre- 
sume that  Spedding's  attention  had  never  been  called  to 
the  three  entries  in  Henslowe's  Diarv,  set  out  in  this 
chapter.  I  think  that  he  is  clearly  right  in  his  opinion 
that  the  play  was  a  collaborated  play,  but  the  facts  dis- 
closed in  the  Diary  as  to  the  making  of  the  play  of  The 
Rising  of  Cardinal  Wolsey,  coupled  with  the  extraordinary 
expense  and  pains  taken  to  attract  an  audience,  cause  me 
to  believe  that  Drayton,  Monday,  Chettle,  and  Smyth 
should  receive  the  credit  for  the  original  composition  of 
Henry  the  Eighth. 

There  is  another  fact  to  be  noted  regarding  the  making 
of  this  play  which  sustains  my  view  of  the  authorship  as 
to  one  of  the  collaborators.  This  fact  has  been  brought 
out  by  the  very  honest  and  searching  investigation  of 
Appleton  Morgan.  This  great  Shakespearean  scholar 
shows,  in  his  ''Study  of  the  Warwickshire  Dialect,"  page 


HENRY  THE  EIGHTH :   TWO  GENTLEMEN  OF  VERONA.  457 

460,  as  heretofore  quoted,  that  a  great  part  of  Henry  VIII 
substantially  consists  of  centos  from  Holinshed,  and  that 
the  dramatist  often  reproduces  the  speeches  given  by 
the  historian. 

Such  easy  alterations  of  the  prose  history  would  nicely 
suit  the  views  of  three  or  four  needy  dramatists. 

It  must  also  be  considered  that  Drayton  was  a  War- 
wickshire man,  born  and  bred,  and  the  Warwickshire 
words  used  in  this  play  can  properly  be  charged  to  him. 

As  a  further  identification  of  Drayton's  connection 
with  this  play,  I  cite  the  reader  to  the  following  confirm- 
atory facts:  Wolsey  says,  "Sweet  aspect,"  with  the 
accent  on  the  penultimate,  and  Drayton,  in  King  Edward 
to  Mrs.  Shore,  uses  the  phrase  "sweet  amiable  aspect," 
with  a  similar  accent.  Wolsey  says,  "And  sounded  all 
the  depths  and  shoals  of  honor,"  while  Drayton,  in  his 
preface  to  the  Epistles,  says,  "Sounded  the  depths  of." 
Butts  says,  "The  high  promotion  of  his  grace  of  Canter- 
bury"; and  Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  1,  S.  13,  says, 
"The  seignories  and  high  promotion."  Cranmer  says, 
"And  like  a  mountain  cedar,"  while  Drayton,  in  Margaret 
to  De  La  Poole,  says,  "And  like  a  mounting  cedar." 
Norfolk  says,  "his  practices  to  light,"  and  Drayton  uses 
the  same  words  in  Mooncalf.  Norfolk  says,  "in  most 
strange  postures,"  and  Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  6, 
S.  38,  says,  "In  postures  strange,  their  limber  bodies 
bending."  Campeius  says,  "They  will  not  stick  to  say," 
and  Drayton,  in  Pol.  3,  p.  10,  in  his  address  to  the  reader, 
says,  "And  some  of  our  outlandish  unnatural  English 
stick  not  to  say."  Gardiner  says,  "Commotions,  uproars, 
with  a  general  taint,"  and  Drayton,  in  Pol.  3,  p.  48,  says, 
"For  those  rebellions,  stirs,  commotions,  uproars  here." 


458  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Gardiner  says,  "But  stop  their  mouths  with  stubborn 
bits,"  while  Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  2,  S.  24,  says, 
"The  angry  horse,  chafed  with  the  stubborn  bit."  Further 
examples  are,  "Unpartial  judging;  The  sacring  bell;  high 
and  mighty;  Guy  and  Colbrand." 

Words  used  only  once  in  this  play  and  in  no  other  play, 
and  used  also  by  Drayton,  are,  "  Bewailing,  Bevis,  choicest, 
cinque-ports,  illustrated,  innumerable,  praemunire,undoubt- 
edly." 

I  have  not  been  able  to  find,  for  the  purpose  of  com- 
parison, a  copy  of  any  play  WTitten  by  Wentworth  Smj^th. 

There  are  several  entries  in  the  Diary  preceding  those 
heretofore  quoted,  which  tend  to  show  that  Henry  Chettle 
was  first  employed  to  write  the  play  of  Cardinal  Wolsey. 
On  August  18,  1601,  Chettle  received  twenty  shillings 
from  Henslowe  "for  his  book  of  carnoulle  Woltsey,"  and 
on  August  21,  1601,  Robert  Shaw  received  from  him 
twenty  shillings  "  for  vellvett  and  mackyng  of  the  docters 
gowne  in  Carnoulle  Wollsey."  Evidently  the  other  three 
poets  were  employed  to  fit  the  play  to  suit  the  taste  of  the 
theatre-goers. 

Passing  from  Henry  the  Eighth,  I  will  briefly  consider 
the  play  of  the  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  in  connection 
solely  with  the  question  of  authorship. 

Any  reader  of  the  play,  familiar  with  the  learning  and 
talents  of  Francis  Bacon,  if  asked  whether  in  his  opinion 
Bacon  was  the  sole  composer  of  this  play,  would  say,  I 
think  that  it  was  the  work  of  two  men  at  least,  and  that  one 
of  the  writers  either  had  no  especial  knowledge  of  the 
location  of  the  places  in  Italy,  or  if  he  had,  did  not  care  to 
be  accurate,  and  further  that  he  had  no  regard  whatever 
for  the  unities.     Bacon  certainly  never  would  have  made 


HENRY  THE  EIGHTH :   TWO  GENTLEMEN  OF  VERONA.    459 

seaport  towns  out  of  Milan  and  Verona.  He  never  would 
have  indulged  in  the  silly  punning  on  "ship"  and  "sheep" 
which  Proteus  and  Speed  indulge  in,  in  the  first  scene  of 
the  first  act.  He  might  have  taken  this  play  as  it  came 
crude  from  the  hands  of  the  hasty  composers  and  treated 
it  to  a  revision. 

Thomas  Dekker  may  clearly  be  traced  in  it.  The 
Milan  and  Verona  blunder  would  have  been  an  easy  matter 
for  the  poet  who  placed  Horace  at  the  Court  of  William 
Rufus.  Blackstone  said  that  "  the  great  fault  of  this  play 
was  the  hastening  too  abruptly  and  without  preparation 
to  the  denouement." 

Upton  and  Hanmer  were  of  the  opinion  that  this  play 
was  "the  production  of  some  inferior  dramatist"  and  that 
"Shakespeare  could  have  had  no  other  hand  in  it  than 
enlivening  it  with  some  speeches  and  lines,  thrown  in  here 
and  there."  Other  commentators  are  of  the  opinion  that 
the  play  was  the  earliest  work  of  the  idolized  ignoramus 
of  Stratford.  The  words  used  once  only,  and  exclamations 
and  phrases  which  I  cull  from  it,  are  clearly  betrayers  of 
the  handiwork  of  Thomas  Dekker  in  this  play.  They  are, 
in  part,  as  follows:  "A  vengeance  on't;  an  unmannerly 
slave;  and  so  farewell;  bear  witness;  by  mine  honesty; 
cruel-hearted;  currish;  fie,  fie;  full-fraught;  gentlemen- 
like;  go  to;  good-hap;  he  makes  me  no  more  ado;  here  is 
a  coil;  I  fear  me;  I  must  where  is  no  remedy;  imprimis; 
inscrutable;  it  is  no  matter;  it  shall  go  hard;  lumpish; 
marry,  quoth  he ;  metamorphosed ;  my  very  heart-strings ; 
nothing  is  impossible;  0,  miserable;  poor  habiliments; 
she  hath  more  hair  than  wit;  so  gingerly;  tedious  nights; 
the  best  is;  to  speak  puling;  true  constancy;  trust  me; 
water  spaniel." 


460  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

The  expression  ''so  gingerly"  used  by  Julia  in  the 
second  scene  of  Act  1,  is  used  by  Dekker  in  A.  1,  S.  1  of 
the  Honest  WTiore. 

Drayton's  co-operation  with  Dekker  in  this  play  is  also 
manifest.  I  find  it  in  such  identical  expressions  as  the 
following:  "A. peevish  girl;  and  fit  for  great  employment; 
and  yet  methinks;  how  say'st  thou;  I  am  peremptory; 
I  can  not  choose  but;  I  dare  to  be  bold;  I  do  conjure  thee; 
is  she  not  passing  fair;  muse  not  that;  not  a  whit;  rude, 
uncivil  touch;  therefore,  I  pray  you;  think'st  thou;  thou 
know'st;  will  serve  the  turn;  you  are  hard  beset." 

Reference  has  been  had  to  the  words  so  aptly  called 
Warwickshireisms  by  Morgan  in  his  careful  study  of  the 
Warwickshire  dialect.  As  summarized,  he  finds  Warwick- 
shireisms in  the  several  plays  as  follows:  In  All's  Well 
that  Ends  Well  15,  in  As  You  Like  It  16,  in  Anthony  and 
Cleopatra  10,  in  the  Comedy  of  Errors  9,  in  Coriolanus  13, 
in  Cymbeline  7,  in  Julius  Caesar  7,  in  King  John  11,  in 
Hamlet  34,  in  1st  Henry  4th  10,  in  2nd  Henry  4th  13,  in 
Henry  5th  34,  in  1st  Henry  6th  5,  in  2d  Henry  Sixth 
21,  in  3d  Henry  Sixth  10,  in  Henry  Eighth  9,  in  Winter's 
Tale  23,  in  the  Merchant  of  Venice  16,  in  Troilus  and 
Cressida  20,  in  the  Tempest  15,  in  Twelfth  Night  14,  in 
King  Lear  14,  in  Love's  Labor's  Lost  17,  in  Macbeth  13, 
in  Measure  for  Measure  14,  in  the  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream  14,  in  the  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  9,  in  Much  Ado 
about  Nothing  8,  in  Othello  17,  in  Pericles  4,  in  Richard 
the  Second  2,  in  Richard  the  Third  8,  in  Romeo  and  Juliet 
15,  in  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew  9,  in  Timon  of  Athens  11, 
in  Titus  Andronicus  5,  and  in  the  Two  Gentlemen  of 
Verona  4. 

I  can  find  no  reference  to  this  play  in  Henslowe's  Diary. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

THE    FALSTAFF    PLAYS   AND    THE    COMEDY    OF    ERRORS 

CONSIDERED. 

"A  deal  of  skimhle-skamhle  stuff." 

—First  Henry  IV,  iii,  1. 

Henry  the  Fourth  is  not  referred  to  in  Henslowe's 
Diary,  but  Henry  the  Fifth  is  noted  on  page  26,  under 
the  date  of  May  14,  1592.  Malone  fixes  the  date  of  First 
Henry  the  Fourth  at  1597;  Chahners,  at  1596;  and 
Hahiwell,  at  1593,  but  I  think  that  the  reader  will  agree 
with  me  that  it  must  have  preceded  Henry  the  Fifth. 
I  suspect  that  the  play  must  have  been  on  the  stage  at 
first  with  Oldcastle  as  the  fat  leader  of  the  jolly  crowd, 
because  in  Act  1,  Scene  2,  Prince  Henry  says,  "As  the 
honey  of  Hybla,  my  old  lord  of  the  castle,"  and  the  expres- 
sion would  be  meaningless  as  applied  to  Falstaff.  It  was 
printed  in  1598  with  no  reference  whatever  to  any  author, 
and  a  second  edition  was  issued  in  1599,  with  these  words 
added,  ''Newly  corrected  by  W.  Shake-speare."  As  my 
examination  is  chiefly  directed  to  the  original  composition 
of  the  play,  I  will  leave  the  question  of  the  maker  of  the 
correction  or  revision  open  for  future  examination,  sug- 
gesting, however,  to  the  unprejudiced  reader  that  in  so  far 
as  the  published  plays  of  1598  and  1599  furnish  evidence 
as  to  composition,  the  presumption  is  that,  while  as  to  the 
original  play  the  authorship  was  not  stated,  the  play  was 
corrected  between  1598  and  1599  by  some  one  whose  name 
is  set  down  as  "  W.  Shake-speare." 

The  Second  Part  of  Henry  the  Fourth  was  printed  in 
1600,  and  it  is  evident  that  originally,  as  in  the  first  part, 


462  THE   SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

the  name  of  Oldcastle  was  used  instead  of  FalstaiT,  because 
in  the  second  scene  of  the  second  act  of  the  quarto  of  1600, 
the  prefix  of  ''Old."  is  retained  before  a  speech  which 
belongs  to  Falstaff. 

The  Second  Part  was  greatly  revised  and  augmented 
before  insertion  in  the  Folio  of  1623.  As  in  the  case  of  the 
first  part,  I  am  of  the  opinion  that  either  Francis  Bacon 
or  Michael  Drayton  was  the  reviser. 

The  same  observation  will  apply  to  Henry  the  Fifth, 
which  was  enlarged  from  eighteen  hundred  to  thirty-five 
hundred  words,  being  almost  doubled  in  size. 

As  these  three  plays  contain  fifty-seven  Warwickshire 
words,  as  shown  by  Appleton  Morgan,  and  as  Drayton 
was  a  constant  reviser,  dresser,  and  augmenter  of  his  pro- 
ductions, it  would  be  fair  to  presume  that  he  was  the  man 
who  revised  these  three  plays,  if  he  had  a  part  in  their 
original  production.  The  main  question,  therefore,  is. 
Who  had  a  part  in  their  original  production?  I  think  that 
Michael  Drayton  and  Thomas  Dekker  had  a  principal  part 
therein. 

In  Chapter  XXXIII,  the  facts  upon  which  I  base  my 
belief  that  Michael  Drayton  participated  in  the  composition 
of  the  three  parts  of  Henry  the  Sixth  were  made  specially 
prominent.  While  he,  as  I  believe,  also  participated  in 
the  creation  of  the  two  parts,  first  and  second,  of  Henry 
the  Fourth  and  Henry  the  Fifth,  much,  very  much  of  the 
comical  and  mirth-provoking  portions  of  these  plays,  as 
well  as  of  the  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  must  be  credited 
to  Thomas  Dekker.  The  reader,  I  think,  will  discover 
Dekker  as  one  of  the  composers,  first,  by  the  ejaculations 
found  in  these  plays,  and  which  are  also  found  in  his 
writings.     I  cite  a  part  of  them  as  follows : 


FALSTAFF   PLAYS   AND   THE   COMEDY   OF   ERRORS.      463 

"A  good  varlet;  ay  prithee;  Beshrew  thy  heart; 
Beshrew  your  heart;  By  my  faith;  By  the  wars;  By  the 
white  hand;  By  this  Hght;  Dame  Partlet;  God-a-mercy; 
Hang  him,  rogue;  Hem;  How  now,  what  news;  I  am 
undone;  I  cry  you  mercy;  0  monstrous;  0,  pardon  me; 
0  rare;  Prithee  peace;  Quoth  a;  Saving  your  reverence; 
So  clap  hands,  and  a  bargain;  This  is  excellent  sport; 
Thou  hempseed;  To  conclude;  To  say  the  truth;  Well, 
God  be  thanked;  Well  said,  in  faith;  You  muddy  conger." 

And  secondly,  he  will  also  be  recognized  by  the  words 
and  phrases  peculiar  to  him  and  also  found  in  these  plays, 
such  as,  "A  soused  gurnet;  aconitum;  buff  jerkin;  car- 
bonado; chuffs;  cocksure;  et  ceteras;  flame  colored;  gal- 
lants; gammon;  hydra-headed;  midriff;  pottlepots;  six- 
penny; incomprehensible;  intelligencer;  leather  jerkin;  nut 
hook;  starveling;  stewed  prune." 

Thirdly,  Dekker  will  be  identified  by  the  expressions 
common  both  to  him  and  to  the  Falstaff  plays,  examples 
of  which  are  here  given. 

AMENDMENT    OF    LIFE. 

Prince  Henry  says,  "I  see  a  good  amendment  of  life  in 
thee."  Dekker,  in  Fortunatus,  1-1,  says,  "But  here 
follows  no  amendment  either  of  life  or  of  livery." 

EXCEEDINGLY   WELL. 

Hotspur  says,  "In  faith,  it  is  exceedingly  well  aimed." 
Dekker,  in  H.  W.,  A.  2,  S.  1,  says,  "Exceedingly  well  met." 

GAMMON    OF    BACON. 

2  Carrier  says,  "I  have  a  ganmion  of  bacon."  Dekker, 
in  2  H.  W.,  A.  2,  S.  1,  says,  "  For  as  much  as  a  gammon  of 
bacon." 


464  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

IT   HOLDS    CURREXT. 

Chamberlain  says,  "It  holds  current  that  I  told  you." 
Dekker,  in  Knights  Conjuring,  says,  "It  goes  for  current." 

SHOW    IT    A    FAIR    PAIR    OF    HEELS. 

P.  Henry  says,  "And  to  show  it  a  fair  pair  of  heels"; 
while  Dekker,  in  Patient  Grissel,  A.  4,  S.  2,  says,  "  But  so, 
God  help  me,  mistress,  I  shall  show  you  a  fair  pair  of  heels  " ; 
and  in  Match  Me  in  London,  he  says,  "  She  hath  shewed 
you  another  bright  pair  of  heels." 

MY    OLD    WARD, — HERE    I    LAY. 

Falstaff  says,  "Thou  knowest  my  old  ward: — here  I 
lay."  Dekker,  in  the  Virgin  Martyr,  says,  "I  lay  at  my 
old  ward." 

I    MADE    ME    XO    MORE    ADO. 

FalstafT  says,  "I  made  me  no  more  ado,  but  took  all 
their  seven  points."  Dekker,  in  2  H.  W.,  A.  1,  S.  1,  says, 
"I  make  me  no  more  ado." 

PLUMED    LIKE    ESTRIDGES. 

Vernon  says,  "All  plum'd  like  estridges  that  wing  the 
wind."  Dekker,  in  Fort.,  A.  2,  S.  2,  says,  "I  plumed  thee 
like  an  ostrich." 

SOUSED    GURXET. 

FalstafT  says,  "If  I  be  not  ashamed  of  my  soldiers,  I 
am  a  soused  gurnet."  Dekker,  in  1  H.  W.,  A.  2,  S.  1, 
says,  "You  soused  gurnet." 


FALSTAFF   PLAYS   AND   THE   COMEDY   OF   ERRORS.      465 
TATTERED   PRODIGALS. 

Falstaff  says,  "  That  I  had  a  hundred  and  fifty  tattered 
prodigals."  Dekker,  in  2  H.  W.,  A.  4,  S.  1,  says,  "It's  no 
matter,  he  finds  no  tattered  prodigals  here." 

YOU   MUDDY   CONGER. 

Doll  says,  ''Hang  yourself,  you  muddy  conger,  hang 
yourself."  Dekker,  in  S.  HoL,  A.  2,  S.  3,  says,  "Trip  and 
go,  you  soused  conger." 

I    CAN    NOT    ABIDE. 

Hostess  says,  "I  can  not  abide  swaggerers."  Dekker, 
in  Wonders  of  a  Kingdom,  says,  "1  can  not  abide,  sir,  to 
see  a  woman  wronged,  not  I." 

AN    EARLY    STIRRER. 

K.  Henry  says,  "  For  our  bad  neighbors  makes  us  early 
stirrers."  Shallow  says,  "An  early  stirrer  by  the  road." 
Dekker,  in  Satiro-mastix,  A.  1,  S.  1,  says,  "  She's  an  early 
stirrer,  ah  sirrah." 

AN    ARRANT. 

Fluellen  says,  "What  an  arrant,  rascally,  beggarly, 
lousy  knave  it  is."  Dekker,  in  2  H.  W.,  A.  2,  S.  1,  says, 
"It's  an  arrant  grandee,  a  churl  and  as  damned  a  cut- 
throat." 

I 

AND    SO    CLAP    HANDS. 

K.  Henry  says,  "In  faith  do;  and  so  clap  hands  and  a 
bargain."  Dekker,  in  Satiro,  says,  "Come,  friends,  clap 
hands,  'tis  a  bargain." 


466  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

TO   SACK   A   CITY. 

Falstaff  says,  "Ay,  Hal;  'tis  hot,  'tis  hot;  there's  that 
will  sack  a  city";  and  in  1  H.  6th,  A.  3,  S.  2,  L.  10,  the 
First  Soldier  says,  "  Our  sacks  shall  be  a  mean  to  sack  the 
city";  while  Dekker,  in  Honest  Whore,  page  160,  says, 
"Here's  ordnance  able  to  sack  a  city." 

FLESHED   THY   MAIDEN    SWORD. 

P.  Henry  says,  "Come,  brother  John,  full  bravely  hast 
thou  fleshed  thy  maiden  sword."  Dekker,  in  the  Virgin 
Martyr  (speaking  of  Antoninus),  says,  "So  well  hath 
fleshed  his  maiden  sword." 

Another  most  remarkable  coincidence  is  found  in  Act  3, 
Scene  3,  1st  Henry  the  Fourth,  where  Bardolph  says  to 
Falstaff,  "Why,  you  are  so  fat.  Sir  John,  that  you  must 
needs  be  out  of  compass;  out  of  all  reasonable  compass. 
Sir  John,"  and  Falstaff  answers,  "  Do  thou  amend  thy 
face  and  I'll  amend  my  life:  Thou  art  our  admiral;  thou 
bearest  the  lantern  in  the  poop, — but  'tis  the  nose  of  thee; 
thou  art  the  knight  of  the  burning  lamp." 

Compare  the  above  with  the  following  from  The  Won- 
derful Year  of  1603  of  Dekker.  Speaking  about  noses, 
he  says,  "Richly  garnished  with  rubies,  crysolites  and 
carbuncles,  which  glistered  so  oriently  that  the  Ham- 
burgers offered  I  know  not  how  many  dollars  for  his  com- 
pany in  an  East  India  voyage  to  have  stood  a  night  in  the 
poop  of  their  admiral,  only  to  save  the  charge  of  candles." 

An  examination  of  the  first  scene  of  the  first  act  of 
First  Henry  the  Fourth  would  lead  to  the  opinion  that 
Drayton  wrote  the  scene,  if  in  the  fifth  line  the  proper 
word  is  "Erinnys"  instead  of  "entrance,"  as  claimed  by 


FALSTAFF    PLAYS    AND    THE    COMEDY   OF    ERRORS.      467 

Mason,  Steevens,  and  others.     It  is  a  Draytonian  word,  used 
by  Drayton  in  Idea,  sonnet  39,  thus : 

''Spiteful  Erinnys  frights  me  with  her  looks; 
My  manhood  dares  not  with  foul  Ate  mell." 

However  that  may  be,  in  addition  to  the  similarity'  in 
style,  there  is  a  remarkable  coincidence  in  words  and  also 
in  accent  between  the  writer  of  this  scene  and  Drayton. 
Westmoreland  says : 

"This  is  his  micle's  teaching,  this  is  Worcester, 
Malevolent  to  you  in  all  aspects." 

The  writer  puts  the  accent  on  the  second  syllable  of 
the  word  "aspect."  Now,  notice  the  following  from 
Drayton's  Owl : 

"For  to  the  proud  malevolent  aspect.'' 

Both  wrongly  accent  the  word  "aspect"  and  both 
couple  the  adjective  "malevolent"  with  it.  Aspect  is  also 
wrongly  accented  in  the  Comedy  of  Errors,  A.  2,  S.  2; 
Love's  Labor's  Lost,  A.  4,  S.  3;  Merchant  of  Venice,  A.  1, 
S.  1;  As  You  Like  It,  A.  4,  S.  3;  Twelfth  Night,  A.  1,  S.  4; 
Winter's  Tale,  A.  2,  S.  1 ;  King  John,  A.  2,  S.  1 ;  Richard 
Third,  A.  1,  S.  2,  and  Henry  the  Eighth,  A.  3,  S.  2. 

In  1st  Henry  lY,  A.  2,^  S.  2,  Falstaff  says,  "  I  would 
your  grace  would  take  me  with  you.  What  means  your 
grace?"  while  Drayton,  in  the  Merry  Devil  of  Edmonton, 
says,  "Take  me  with  you,  good  Sir  John."  In  the  first 
scene  of  the  third  act,  Glendower  says,  "I  can  call  spirits 
from  the  vasty  deep."  In  the  Ninth  Nymphal,  Drayton 
says,  "Thence  down  to  Neptune's  vasty  deep";  while  in 


468  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE, 

De  La  Poole  to  Queen  Margaret,  Drayton  says,  "And  let 
them  call  the  spirits  from  hell  again."  Hotspur  says, 
"See  how  this  river  comes  me  cranking  in";  while  in 
Pol.  2,  p.  133,  Drayton  says,  "As  crankling  Manyfold,  the 
first  that  lends  him  force."  Hotspur  says,  "And  here  the 
smug  and  silver  Trent  shall  run";  while  in  Barons'  Wars, 
C.  2,  S.  14,  Drayton  says,  "  At  whose  fair  foot  the  silver 
Trent  doth  slide."  Hostpur  says,  "  'Tis  the  next  way  to 
turn  tailor  or  be  red-breast  teacher";  while  in  the  Owl, 
Drayton  says,  "The  little  red-breast  teacheth  charity." 

In  this  scene  the  following  peculiar  words  used  once 
only  in  the  plays  are  also  used  by  Drayton:  "Cranking, 
cressets,  moldwarp,  tripartite."  The  word  "cantle"  is 
also  used  by  Drayton.  Hotspur's  allusion  to  ballad-mon- 
gers as  mincing  poetry,  is  directly  in  Drayton's  vein.  He 
satirizes  ballad-makers  repeatedly.  In  his  Elegy  to 
Reynolds,  he  exclaims: 

"I  scorned  your  ballad  then,  though  it  were  done. 
And  had  for  finis  William  Elderton." 

Passing  to  the  second  part  of  Henry  the  Fourth,  I 
think  that  the  inference  from  the  following  facts  should 
be  that  the  first  scene  of  the  first  act  is  decidedly  Dray- 
tonian.  Bardolph  says,  "As  good  as  heart  can  wish"; 
while  Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  3,  S.  13,  says,  "As 
heart  could  wish,  when  everything  was  fit."  Bardolph 
says,  "Prince  Harry  slain  outright,"  while  in  Pol.  1,  p. 
16,  Drayton  says,  "  Six  hundred  slew  outright  through  his 
peculiar  strength."     Travers  says: 

"  And  bending  forward,  struck  his  armed  heels 
Against  the  panting  sides  of  his  poor  jade 
Up  to  the  rowel  head." 


FALSTAFF    PLAYS    AND    THE    COMEDY   OF    ERRORS.      469 

while  in  Agincourt,  Drayton  says,  "They  struck  their 
rowels  to  the  bleeding  sides  of  their  fierce  steeds." 

Northumberland  says,  "So  looks  the  Strond,  whereon 
the  imperious  flood,"  while  in  Pol.  3,  p.  160,  Drayton 
says,  "The  North's  imperious  flood."  In  2d  Henry,  A.  4, 
S.  2,  FalstafT  says,  "I'll  tickle  your  catastrophe,"  while 
Drayton,  in  the  Merry  Devil,  says,  "0,  it  tickles  our 
catastrophe." 

In  Henry  the  Fifth,  the  style  of  the  scene  and  the 
reference  to  Saint  Crispin's  day  points  to  Drayton  as  the 
author  of  that  scene.     The  king  says: 

"  He  that  outlives  this  day  and  comes  safe  home, 
Will  stand  a  tiptoe  when  the  day  is  named." 

Drayton,  in  Owen  Tudor,  says,  "Nor  stand  on  tip- 
toe"; and  again  in  Pol.  1,  p.  108,  he  says,  "On  lofty  tip- 
toes then  began  to  look  about";  and  on  page  173,  "On 
tip-toes  set  aloft,  this  proudly  uttereth  he." 

King  Henry  says,  "That  fought  with  us  on  Saint 
Crispin's  day,"  while  in  Agincourt,  Drayton  says: 

"  Upon  Saint  Crispin's  day. 
Fought  was  this  noble  fray." 

York  says: 

"  My  lord,  most  humbly  on  my  knee  I  beg. 
The  leadmg  of  the  vaward." 

while  Drayton,  in  Agincourt,  says : 

"  The  Duke  of  York  so  dread. 
The  eager  vaward  led." 


470  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

An  examination  of  the  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  leads 
me  to  the  behef  that  Thomas  Dekker  was  one  of  the  original 
makers  of  this  play.  I  trace  him  therein  by  means  of  the 
exclamations,  single  words,  and  phrases  common  to  Dekker 
and  one  of  the  writers  of  the  play.  I  give  examples  mider 
each  head.  Among  the  exclamations  are,  "Ay,  forsooth; 
Bear  witness ;  Believe  it ;  By  my  troth ;  Come  cut  and  long 
tail;  Fie,  fie;  My  hearts;  Nay,  by  the  mass;  Out,  alas; 
Out  upon't;  Save  you;  Take  heed;  Trust  me;  Well,  go 
to."  Single  words  of  a  remarkable  character  are  as  fol- 
lows :  "'  Catalan,  catamountain,  cornuto,  latten,  Machiavel, 
Mephistophiles,  preposterously,  pizzle,  tricking,  unconfin- 
able."  It  is  noticeable  as  to  the  word  "peevish"  used  in 
this  play,  that  it  means  "foolish."  In  A.  1,  S.  4,  line  11, 
Mrs.  Quickly  says,  "  His  worst  fault  is,  that  he  is  given  to 
prayer,  he  is  something  peevish  that  way."  Malone  argues, 
as  to  this  word,  that  this  was  a  blunder  of  Mrs.  Quickly 
and  that  "peevish"  meant  "precise,"  but  it  is  used  by 
Dekker  in  the  Virgin  Martyr  as  meaning  "foolish."  Thus 
Harfax  says,  "Before  that  "peevish  lady  had  to  do  with 
you."     It  is  also  so  used  by  Drayton. 

The  phrases  used  in  the  play  and  also  used  by  Dekker 
are  in  part  as  follows: 

"And  thou  deservest  it;  Attired  in  a  robe  of  white;  Be 
content ;  Be  ruled ;  For  all  the  'orld ;  Have  a  care ;  I  am  undone ; 
I  can  not  abide;  I  had  rather  than  a  thousand  pound;  I'll 
sauce  them ;  My  heart  misgives  me ;  Panderly  rascals ;  Serve 
your  turn;  Sweating  and  blowing;There  is  no  remedy;Trudge ; 
Twelve  score ;  Vanish  like  hailstones ;  Would  I  were  hanged." 

In  Act  4,  S.  2,  Mrs.  Page,  breaking  into  rhyme,  says : 

"  We  do  not  act  that  often  jest  and  laugh, 
'Tis  old  but  true.  Still  swine  eat  all  the  draff." 


FALSTAFF    PLAYS    AND    THE    COMEDY    OF    ERRORS.      471 

In  the  Raven's  Almanac,  Dekker  says,  "The  still  sow 
eats  up  all  the  draff." 

In  the  Merry  Wives,  Drayton  appears  in  the  fifth  scene 
of  the  fifth  act,  where  the  fairies  enter. 

If  Drayton  wrote  the  Merry  Devil  of  Edmonton,  a 
play  with  which  he  is  credited  by  good  evidence,  he  created 
therein  the  character  of  Mine  Host  Blague,  of  the  George 
at  Waltham,  who  served  the  good  Duke  of  Norfolk,  the 
very  same  kind  of  a  Host  who  makes  his  appearance  in 
Drayton's  portion  of  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  and  who  is 
re-created  in  the  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  as  "'  Mine  Host 
of  the  Garter  Inn."     The  resemblance  is  very  striking. 

The  reader  has  heretofore  taken  note  that  Meres 
applies  to  Drayton  the  exclamation  of  Falstaff  that 
"  there  is  nothing  but  roguery  to  be  found  in  villainous 
man." 

In  the  examination  of  these  plays  I  have  not  considered 
the  questions  raised  as  to  priority  of  composition,  nor  as 
to  the  substitution  of  Falstaff  for  Oldcastle.  Neither 
have  I  regarded  it  as  very  important  to  define  the  status 
of  Mrs.  Quickly.  It  appears  that  in  the  First  Part  of  Henry 
the  Fourth,  she  was  married  to  the  Host  of  the  Boar's 
Head.  In  the  Second  Part,  she  appears  as  a  poor  widow 
of  Eastcheap.  In  Henry  the  Fifth,  she  appears  as  the 
wife  of  Pistol;  and  in  the  Merry  Wives,  she  is  Mistress 
Quickly,  seemingly  a  stranger  to  the  fat  Knight.  We  cer- 
tainly know  that  Dekker  paid  no  attention  whatever  to 
the  unities,  and  we  also  know  that  he  was  a  reviser  and 
dresser  of  plays;  that  the  original  comedy  of  the  Merry 
Wives  of  Windsor,  printed  in  January  1601-2,  was 
amended,  corrected,  and  revised,  and,  as  such,  acted 
before  King  James  in  1604. 


472  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

The  historical  and  philosophical  parts  of  the  Falstaff 
plays,  grouped  together  under  the  Shakespeare  title,  are 
very  pleasing  and  very  instructive ;  but  to  the  mass  of  the 
reading  public  the    Falstaffian  quips,  quirks,  and  sallies 
of  wit  bear  the  palm  of  excellence.     ^\^io  but   Dekker 
could  have  said,  "Go  thy  ways,  old  Jack;  die  when  thou 
wilt,  if  manhood,  good  manhood  be  not  forgot  upon  the 
face  of  the  earth,  then  am  I  a  shotten  herring.     There  live 
not  three  good  men  unhanged  in  England;  and  one  of 
them  is  fat  and  grows  old"?    AMio  but  Dekker  could  have 
put  it  into  the  mouth  of  Prince  Henry,  acting  in  the  role 
of  his  father,  to  say  to  himself,  "  ^^Tly  dost  thou  converse 
with  that  trunk  of  humors,  that  bolting  hutch  of  beastli- 
ness, that  swoln  parcel  of  dropsies,  that  huge  bombard  of 
sack,  that  stuffed  cloak-bag  of  guts,  that  roasted  Manning- 
tree  ox  with  the  pudding  in  his  belly,  that  reverend  vice, 
that  grey  iniquity,  that  father  ruffian,  that  vanity  in  years, 
that  villainous,  abominable  misleader  of  youth,  Falstaff, 
that  old  white-bearded  Satan?"     And  who  but  Dekker 
could  have  made  Falstaff  answer,  "My  lord,  the  man  I 
know,  but  to  say  I  know  more  harm  in  him  than  in  myself, 
were  to  say  more  than  I  know.     That  he  is  old  (the  more 
the  pity)  his  white  hairs  do  witness  it.     If  sack  and  sugar 
be  a  fault,  God  help  the  wicked!    If  to  be  old  and  merry 
be  a  sin,  then  many  an  old  host  that  I  know  is  damned: 
if  to  be  fat  be  to  be  hated,  then  Pharaoh's  lean  kine  are 
to   be   loved.     No,   my  good  lord;  banish   Peto,   banish 
Bardolph,  banish  Poins,  but  for  sweet  Jack  Falstaff,  kind 
Jack  Falstaff,  true  Jack  Falstaff,  valiant  Jack  Falstaff, 
and  therefore  more  valiant,  being,  as  he  is,  old  Jack  Fal- 
staff, banish  not  him  thy  Harry's  company;  banish  plump 
Jack,  and  banish  all  the  world." 


FALSTAFF   PLAYS   AND   THE    COMEDY   OF   ERRORS.      473 

It  was  not  in  the  style  or  vein  of  either  Bacon  or  Dray- 
ton to  use  such  phrases  as  Falstaff  and  his  associates  used 
in  these  three  plays,  however  witty  or  waggish  they  were. 

Who  amended,  revised,  and  made  additions  to  the  Merry 
Wives  of  Windsor?  As  it  appeared  in  the  Folio  of  1623,  it 
contains  nearly  twice  the  number  of  lines  that  the  quarto 
of  1602  contained.  The  speeches  of  the  several  characters 
are  greatly  lengthened  and  elaborated  and  new  distinctive 
features  are  given  to  them.  This  augmentation  and 
revision,  if  performed  by  one  of  the  original  composers, 
would  naturally  be  the  work  of  Michael  Drayton.  It  is 
either  to  him  or  to  Francis  Bacon  that  the  credit  of  such 
revision  and  addition  must  be  awarded,  ^^^lat  I  claim 
is,  that  in  the  play,  as  revised  and  added  to,  the  handi- 
work of  Dekker  and  Drayton  is  showm. 

Whoever  will  read  the  Comedy  of  Errors  carefully  will 
be  struck  with  the  incongruities  and  anachronisms  which 
abound  in  it.  He  will  find  a  Nunnery  established  in  the 
old  city  of  Ephesus,  presided  over  by  a  lady  Abbess.  The 
Syracusan  Antipholus  calls  himself  a  Christian.  The 
money  used  consists  of  ducats,  marks,  and  guilders. 
Modern  States  of  Europe  and  also  America  are  lugged  in. 
There  is  a  probable  allusion  to  Henry  the  Fourth  of 
France,  and  mention  is  made  of  Lapland  sorcerers,  Turkish 
tapestry,  a  rapier,  and  a  striking  clock.  As  Knight  well 
says  as  to  the  allusion  to  America,  ''This  is  certainly  one 
of  the  boldest  anachronisms  of  Shakespeare,  for  although 
the  period  of  the  action  of  the  Comedy  of  Errors  may 
include  a  range  of  from  four  to  five  centuries,  it  must  cer- 
tainly be  placed  before  the  occupation  of  the  city  by  the 
Mohammedans,  and  therefore  some  centuries  before  the 
discovery  of  America." 


474  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

It  does  not  seem  probable  that  Francis  Bacon,  if  he 
had  originally  written  a  play  with  such  a  title,  would  have 
been  guilty  of  such  incongruities  and  anachronisms.  He 
would  have  been  careful  and  accurate,  if  he  was  the  original 
composer,  as  to  his  allusions  to  customs,  countries,  or  periods. 

But  contrariwise,  Thomas  Dekker,  in  the  making  of  a 
play,  as  heretofore  shown,  was  careless  and  reckless  as 
to  the  place,  time,  person,  or  current  event.  For  instance, 
in  Satiro-mastix,  Dekker  transfers  Horace  to  England  and 
describes  William  Rufus,  a  rude  and  ignorant  soldier-king, 
as  "Learning's  true  Msecenas,  poesy's  King."  It  is  also 
a  circumstance  to  be  considered  that  Dekker  takes  the 
pains  in  his  writings  to  bring  in  allusions  to  this  play. 
Thus,  in  Chapter  six  of  "A  Knight's  Conjuring,"  he  says, 
''only  cause  of  this  Comedy  of  Errors";  and  in  Satiro- 
mastix,  he  prepared  an  address  ad  lectorem  in  which  he 
says,  "Instead  of  the  trumpets  sounding  thrice  before  the 
play  begins,  it  shall  not  be  amiss  for  him  that  will  read, 
first  to  behold  this  short  Comedy  of  Errors."  Prior  to  its 
publication  in  the  Folio  of  1623  (although  this  play  was 
acted  as  early  as  1604)  it  is,  so  far  as  is  known,  mentioned 
only  by  Meres  in  his  "Palladis  Tamia"  in  1598;  that  is  to 
say,  if  by  the  description  "errors,"  he  meant  the  Comedy 
of  Errors.  I  can  find  no  reference  whatever  to  it  in  Hens- 
lowe's  Diary.  The  writer,  whoever  he  was,  used  the 
incidents  of  the  Mensechmi,  a  story  of  Plautus,  and  the 
play,  apparently,  is  the  work  of  collaborators.  The  tests 
applied  indicate  to  me  that  Thomas  Dekker  was  one  of 
the  collaborators.  The  exclamations  point  to  him;  as  for 
instance,  "Avoid  thee,  fiend;  By  my  troth;  How  now,  a 
madman;  In  brief;  Now  as  I  am  a  Christian;  Now,  trust 
me;  Thou  villain." 


FALSTAFF   PLAYS   AND   THE    COMEDY   OF   ERRORS.      475 

The  phrases  point  the  same  way.  I  give  a  few  of  them, 
Antipholus  says,  "A  mere  anatomy,  a  mountebank," 
while  Dekker,  in  Knight's  Conjuring,  Chap.  3,  says,  ''A 
miserable  anatomy."  Dromio  E.  says,  "Am  I  so  round 
with  you  as  you  with  me,"  while  Dekker,  in  the  dedication 
of  Satiro-mastix  to  the  world,  says,  ''World,  I  was  once 
resolved  to  be  round  with  thee,  because  I  know  'tis  thy 
fashion  to  be  round  with  everybody."  Dromio  S.  says, 
"And  here  she  comes  in  the  habit  of  a  light  wench"; 
while  Dekker,  in  2d  H.  W.,  A.  4,  S.  2,  says,  "Light  wenches 
are  no  idle  freight."  Dromio  S.  says,  "But  I  guess  it 
stood  in  her  chin  by  the  salt  rheum  that  ran  between 
France  and  it."  Dekker,  in  2d  H.  W.,  A.  2,  S.  1,  says, 
"Am  troubled  with  a  whoreson  salt  rheum."  The  Duke 
says,  "Saw'st  thou  him  enter  at  the  abbey  here?"  Dek- 
ker, in  S.  HoL,  A.  2,  S.  4,  says,  "Speak,  saw'st  thou  him?" 
^geon  says,  "Why  look  you  strange  on  me?"  Dekker, 
in  Patient  Grissel,  says,  "Look  you  so  strange." 

The  Syracusan  Dromio's  description  of  a  bailiff,  when 
Adriana  asks  him,  "Where  is  thy  master,  Dromio,  is  he 
well?"  could  only  have  been  coined  by  Dekker.  Dromio 
replies : 

"  No,  he's  in  Tartar  limbo,  worse  than  hell. 

A  devil  in  an  everlasting  garment  hath  him. 

One  whose  hard  heart  is  buttoned  up  with  steel ; 

A  fiend,  a  fairy,  pitiless  and  rough; 

A  wolf,  nay  worse,  a  fellow  all  in  buff: 

A  back  friend,  a  shoulder  clapper,  one  that  counter- 
mands 

The  passages  of  alleys,  creeks  and  narrow  lands ; 

A  hound  that  runs  counter,  and  yet  draws  dry  foot 
well ; 

One  that  before  judgment,  carries  poor  souls  to  hell." 


476  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

Dekker's  life  shows  that  he  was  often  in  the  hands  of 
the  officers  of  the  law,  and  very  often  confined  either  in 
the  Counter  or  the  King's  Bench  Prison.  Henslowe's 
Diary  records  two  of  the  arrests — one  on  page  118  and 
the  other  on  page  143.  He  was  familiar  with  courts  and 
law  terms  and  practice.  I  have  already  adverted  to  his 
legal  knowledge.  In  the  play  of  "If  this  be  not  a  good 
play,"  he  says,  ''Proceed  with  your  chancery  suit.  I  have 
begun  your  bill,  humbly  complaining";  and  in  Britannia's 
Honor,  he  says,  "The  Lord  Mayor's  house  is  a  Chancery. 
He  is  the  Chancellor  to  mitigate  the  fury  of  the  law.  He, 
the  moderator  between  the  griping  rich  and  the  wrangling 
poor." 

The  only  contemporary  writer  whom  I  could  fit  in  as 
an  aid  to  Dekker  in  the  composition  of  this  play  would  be 
Henry  Porter,  who  wrote  the  "Two  Angry  Women  of 
Abingdon."  A  notable  peculiarity  of  Porter  was  the 
frequent  use  of  proverbs.  The  long  doggerel  lines  such  as 
are  found  in  the  first  scene  of  the  third  act  are  precisely 
in  the  style  of  Porter,  while  Dekker  also  occasionally 
indulges  in  just  such  long  lines. 

That  I  am  not  singular  in  my  suggestion  as  to  the  style 
of  Henry  Porter,  I  refer  the  reader  to  his  play  of  the  Two 
Angry  Women  of  Abingdon  just  cited;  and  as  to  his  capa- 
bility, I  quote  what  Charles  Lamb  said  of  him.  After 
setting  out  some  extracts  from  the  play.  Lamb  adds  the 
following:  "The  pleasant  comedy  from  which  these 
extracts  are  taken  is  contemporary  with  some  of  the 
earliest  of  Shakespeare's  and  is  in  no  whit  inferior  to  either 
the  Comedy  of  Errors  or  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew,  for 
instance.  It  is  full  of  business  humor  and  merry  malice. 
Its  night  scenes  are  peculiarly  sprightly  and  wakeful;  the 


FALSTAFF    PLAYS    AND    THE    COMEDY    OF    ERRORS.      477 

versification    unencumbered    and    rich    with    compound 
epithets." 

But  this  play  of  the  Comedy  of  Errors  must  have  been 
revised  and  shaped  into  a  connected  and  complete  play, 
adapted  both  to  popular  audiences  and  to  the  Court,  by 
Francis  Bacon.  I  am  of  that  opinion  because  both  Dekker 
and  Porter  wrote  hastily  and  carelessly,  and  the  speech  of 
iEgeon  in  the  first  scene  of  the  first  act  contains  phrases 
which  could  only  have  originated  with  the  author  of  the 
Venus  and  Adonis. 


4> 


CHAPTER  XXXVII. 

HAMLET   AND   THE  WINTER'S   TALE    CONSIDERED. 

"Cudgel  thy  brains  no  more  about  it." 

—Hamlet,  v,  1. 

In  the  year  1602,  a  book  called  "  The  Revenge  of  Ham- 
let, Prince  of  Denmark,  as  it  was  lately  acted  by  the  Lord 
Chamberlain's  servants, "  was  printed  by  James  Roberts. 
No  copy  of  this  edition  has  as  yet  been  found.  No  author's 
name  was  affixed  to  it,  so  far  as  the  entry  in  the  Stationers' 
Register  shows. 

In  the  following  year,  1603,  a  play  called  "  The  tragical 
history  of  Hamlet,  Prince  of  Denmark,  by  William 
Shake-speare,  as  it  hath  been  divers  times  acted  by  his 
Highness'  servants  in  the  City  of  London;  as  also  in  the 
two  Universities  of  Cambridge  and  Oxford  and  elsewhere, " 
was  printed  for  Nicholas  Ling  and  John  Trundell.  Noth- 
ing was  known  as  to  the  time  when  this  play  was  put  upon 
the  stage  until  the  year  1790,  when  Henslowe's  Diary  was 
found.  The  following  entry  was  discovered  therein,  at 
page  35  of  Collier's  reprint:  ''9  of  June  1594,  R'd  at 
Hamlet  VIII  s."  The  play  of  Hamlet,  therefore,  is  traced 
back  to  the  year  1594.  Malone  guessed  that  the  play 
printed  by  Roberts  was  composed  by  Thomas  Kyd,  but 
he  gave  no  authority  or  reason  for  the  conjecture. 

A  pamphlet  of  Nash,  or  rather  an  epistle  of  his,  pre- 
fixed to  Greene's  Menaphon,  printed  in  1589,  contains  the 
following  passage:  ''It  is  a  common  practice  now-a-daies 
amongst  a  sort  of  shifting  companions,  that  runne  through 
every  arte  and  thrive  by  none  to  leave  the  trade  of  Noverint 


HAMLET   AND    THE    WINTEr's   TALE.  479 

wherein  they  were  borne  and  biisie  themselves  with  the 
indevours  of  art,  that  could  scarcely  latinize  their  necke- 
verse  if  they  should  have  neede;  yet  English  Seneca  read 
by  candle  light  yields  manyie  good  sentences,  as  Bloud  is  a 
beggar  and  so  forth;  and  if  you  intreate  him  faire  in  a 
frostie  morning,  he  will  afToord  you  whole  Hamlets,  I 
should  say  handfulls  of  tragical  speeches."  This  shows, 
at  the  least,  that  Hamlet  had  been  acted  before  1589. 

Again,  in  1596,  Dr.  Lodge  published  a  pamphlet  called 
"Wit's  Miserie,"  which  calls  one  of  the  devils  described 
in  it  "  a  foule  lubber,  and  looks  as  pale  as  the  visard  of  ye 
ghost  which  cried  so  miserably  at  ye  theator  like  an  oister 
wife,  Hamlet  revenge." 

Steevens,  in  his  Variorum  of  1773,  says,  "I  have  seen  a 
copy  of  Speght's  edition  of  Chaucer,  which  formerly 
belonged  to  Dr.  Gabriel  Harvey  (the  antagonist  of  Nash), 
who,  in  his  o^vn  handwriting,  has  set  down  the  play  as  a 
performance  with  which  he  was  well  acquainted  in  the 
year  1598.  His  words  are  these:  'The  younger  sort  take 
much  delight  in  Shakespeare's  Venus  and  Adonis,  but  his 
Lucrece  and  his  tragedy  of  Hamlet,  Prince  of  Denmark, 
have  it  in  them  to  please  the  wiser  sort,  1598.'" 

In  1602  Dekker,  in  his  play  of  Satiro-mastix,  alludes 
to  Hamlet  when  he  makes  Tucca  say,  ''No,  Fyest,  my 
name's  Hamlet's  revenge ;  thou  hast  been  at  Paris  Garden, 
hast  not?" 

Wlio  now  was  meant  by  the  William  Shake-speare  of 
the  edition  of  1603?  If  the  Venus  and  Adonis  and  the 
Tarquin  and  Lucrece  were  written  by  Francis  Bacon,  as 
the  examination  which  I  have  given  to  the  two  poems 
would  seem  to  show;  and  if  Gabriel  Harvey  in  1598  was  a 
reliable  man  and  knew  who  the  real  author  was,  then  the 


480  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

disinterested  reader  would  have  the  right  to  conclude  that 
Francis  Bacon  was  the  author  or  reviser  at  least  of  the 
play  of  Hamlet.  His  opinion  would  also  be  strengthened 
by  the  allusion  of  Nash  to  the  person  who  ''left  the  trade 
of  Noverint,  whereto  they  were  born,"  since  Bacon  was  a 
lawyer. 

And  here  I  might  be  content  to  leave  the  whole  matter, 
were  it  not  that  the  reader  is  entitled  to  all  the  facts  that 
can  be  gathered  from  the  text  of  the  play.  In  examining 
the  text  of  1603  and  1623,  it  would  seem  that  Michael 
Drayton  had  a  part  in  the  composition,  either  of  the 
original  play  or  of  the  revised  play.  In  the  1603  play,  in 
Act  1,  Scene  1,  Horatio  says,  ''But  see  the  sun  in  russet 
mantle  clad,"  and  in  the  1623  edition  he  says,  "But  look, 
the  morn  in  russet  mantle  clad";  while  Drayton,  in  Pol. 
2,  p.  120,  says,  "  Himself,  a  palmer  poor,  in  homely  russet 
clad."  In  the  second  scene,  Hamlet  says,  "Frailty,  thy 
name  is  woman,"  repeated  in  1623,  while  Drayton  makes 
Rosamond  say  to  King  Henry,  "\Aniy  on  my  woman 
frailty  should'st  thou  lay?"  In  the  same  scene  Hamlet 
says,  in  the  play  of  1603,  "I'll  speak  to  it  if  hell  itself 
should  gap,"  and  Drayton,  in  Pol.  2,  p.  269,  says,  "Where 
wounds  gap'd  wide  as  hell." 

In  the  fifth  scene  of  the  1603  play,  the  Ghost  says: 

"  0,  I  find  thee  apt  and  duller  shouldst  thou  be 
Than  the  fat  weed  which  rots  itself  in  ease 
On  Lethe  wharf." 

Drayton  says,  in  Heroical  Epistles,  p.  166: 

"Or  those  black  weeds  on  Lethe  bank  below." 

In  the  fourth  scene  of  the  third  act,  of  1623,  Hamlet 
says,  "And  batten  on  the  moor";  while  Drayton,  in  Pol. 


HAMLET   AND    THE    WINTER's   TALE.  481 

3,  p.  90,  says,  ''That  Somerset  may  say  her  battening 
moors  do  scorn."  The  sentence  does  not  occur  in  the 
1603  edition.  In  the  1623  play  (and  not  appearing  in 
tha't  of  1603)  Hamlet  says,  "The  important  acting  of 
your  dread  command,"  while  Drayton,  in  Pol.  2,  p.  121, 
says,  "For  this  great  action  fit;  by  whose  most  dread 
command."     Hamlet  says: 

"  For  'tis  the  sport  to  have  the  engineer 
Hoist  with  his  owm  petard." 

while  in  Agincourt,  Drayton  says: 

"The  engineer  providing  the  petard 
To  break  the  strong  portcullis." 

In  Act  4,  Scene  3,  the  Queen  says,  "Pulled  the  poor 
wretch  from  her  melodious  lay";  while  Drayton,  in  Pol. 
3,  p.  18,  says,  "By  the  enticmg  strains  of  his  melodious 
lay."  In  Act  5,  Scene  1,  Hamlet  says,  "^Vhose  phrase  of 
sorrow  conjures  the  wandering  stars,"  while  Drayton,  in 
Idea,  43,  says,  "  So  doth  the  plowman  gaze  the  wandering 
star." 

Much  difficulty  has  been  experienced  by  the  commen- 
tators and  critics  m.  interpreting  and  explaining  the  word 
"Esile,"  as  printed  in  the  Folio  of  1623.  The  words  are, 
"Woul't  drink  up  Esile?  eat  a  crocodile."  Furness,  in 
the  Variorum,  Vol.  1,  p.  405,  says,  "With  the  exception 
of  'the  dram  of  eale,'  no  word  or  phrase  of  this  tragedy 
has  occasioned  more  discussion  than  this  Esill  or  Esile, 
which,  as  it  stands,  represents  nothing  in  the  heavens 
above  or  the  earth  beneath,  or  the  waters  under  the  earth, 
if  from  the  last  we  exclude  the  vessels  of  the  Quarto." 
But  I  believe  that  there  is  no  difficulty  whatever  about 


482  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

the  word  or  its  interpretation,  and  my  belief  is  based  on 
the  following  matter  of  fact,  namely,  that  a  river  exists 
in  England  called  the  Isell,  which  Drayton,  in  the  twenty- 
fourth  song  of  Polyolbion,  thus  alludes  to: 

"The  one  o'er  Isell's  banks,  the  ancient  Saxons  taught, 
At  Over  Isell  rests." 

Stowe,  the  chronicler,  twice  refers  to  it  at  page  725, 
thus:  "It  standeth  a  good  distance  from  the  river  IseU, 
but  hath  a  sconce  on  Isell  of  incredible  strength." 

I  cite  other  identical  expressions,  as  follows:  "Most 
humbly  do  I  take  my  leave;  But  soft,  methinks;  That's 
not  my  meaning;  My  honored  lord;  And  dare  scarce;  For 
to  the  noble  mind;  heavenly  powers;  in  the  mean  time; 
to  your  clemency;  But  to  the  matter:  Mine  ov,ti  good 
lord;  for  the  nonce;  will  he,  nill  he;  most  ingenious;  in 
respect  of;  not  a  whit;  my  cause  aright." 

Among  the  words  found  once  only  in  the  plays  and  in 
Hamlet,  and  also  used  by  Drayton,  are:  "A-work,  bet, 
bilboes,  brainish,  compost,  croaking,  di'ossy,  dumb-shows, 
encumbered,  enviously,  fatness,  hatchment,  loudly,  occur- 
rent,  o'erweigh,  pester,  portraiture,  prosperously,  repulsed, 
savior,  shove,  shrill-sounding,  solidity,  stiffly,  suiting, 
tetter,  transports,  tricked,  unction,  unknowing,  unmixed." 

There  are  two  words  to  which  I  invite  the  particular 
attention  of  the  reader.  In  the  third  scene  of  the  third 
act  (folio),  Hamlet  says,  "Up  sword  and  know  thou  a 
more  horrid  hent."  This  word  "hent"  is  a  puzzler  to  the 
commentators.  Theobald  says,  "we  must  either  restore 
bent  or  hint."  Warburton  says,  "The  true  word  is  plainly 
hest,  command."  CapeU  adopts  hint.  But  why  adopt 
any  other  word  than  hent,  since  Drayton  uses  it  in  Polyol- 


HAMLET   AND    THE    WINTER'S   TALE.  483 

bion,  Vol.  3,  p.  226,  in  connection  with  the  reign  of  Queen 
Ehzabeth,  thus :  "  EUzabeth,  the  next,  this  falhng  sceptre 
hent."  This  shows  that  as  a  noun  the  word  means 
"grasp,"  and  as  a  verb  it  means  ''to  grasp,"  or,  as  used  by 
Drayton,  "grasped." 

The  reader's  attention  is  also  called  to  the  word 
"drossy,"  used  only  once  in  the  plays  and  in  the  fifth 
act,  second  scene.  Hamlet  says,  "Thus  has  he  and 
many  more  of  the  same  bevy  that  I  know  the  drossy  age 
dotes  on."  In  the  Barons'  Wars,  Canto  1,  Stanza  21, 
Drayton  says: 

"That  had  no  mixture  of  the  drossy  earth. 
But  all  compact  of  perfect  heavenly  fire." 

These  two  words,  which  may  be  termed  very  unusual 
words,  are  not  found  in  the  Quarto  of  1603;  and  as  they 
are  found  in  Drayton's  writings,  that  fact,  coupled  with 
the  strangeness  of  the  words,  is  a  circumstance  to  be  con- 
sidered in  connection  with  the  theory  of  a  revision  of  the 
original  play  by  Michael  Drayton. 

There  are  other  words  used  twice  and  thrice  only  in 
the  plays  and  also  used  by  Drayton  which  should  be 
pointed  out,  as  for  instance,  "  Addicted,  attractive,  combi- 
nation, extinct,  lank,  nighted,  o'ertop,  ponderous,  retro- 
grade, robustious,  russet,  scanned,  struggling,  trippingly, 
unworthiest,  yesty." 

To  give  the  reader  an  idea  of  the  revision  I  quote 
Hamlet's  soliloquy  as  it  appeared  in  1603,  and  he  can 
compare  it  with  the  version  of  1623,  as  set  out  in  any  of 
the  popular  editions  of  the  plays : 


484  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

"  To  be  or  not  to  be,  aye,  there's  the  point, 
To  die,  to  sleep,  is  that  all,  aye  all ; 
No,  to  sleep,  to  dream,  aye,  mary  there  it  goes, 
For  in  that  dream  of  death,  when  we  wake, 
And  borne  before  an  everlasting  Judge, 
From  whence  no  passenger  ever  returned, 
The  undiscovered  country,  at  whose  sight 
The  happy  smile  and  the  accursed  damn'd. 
But  for  this,  the  joyful  hope  of  this, 
Who'd  bear  the  scorns  and  flattery  of  the  world. 
Scorned  by  the  right  rich,  the  rich  curs'd  of  the  poor? 
The  widow  being  oppress'd,  the  orphan,  wrong'd. 
The  taste  of  hunger  or  a  tyrant's  reign. 
And  thousand  more  calamities  besides 
To  grunt  and  sweat  under  this  weary  life. 
When  that  he  may  his  full  quietus  make 
With  a  bare  bodkin.     Wlio  would  this  endure 
But  for  a  hope  of  something  after  death; 
WTiich  puzzles  the  brain  and  doth  confound  the  sense 
Which  makes  us  rather  bear  those  evils  we  have 
Than  fly  to  others  that  we  know  not  of. 
Aye,  that,  0  this  conscience  makes  cowards  of  us  all." 

This  original  soliloquy  is  very  much  in  the  style  of 
Thomas  Dekker.  If  he  did  not  imitate,  he  must  then 
have  originated  some  of  the  expressions,  phrases,  and 
exclamations  found  in  the  play.  Thus,  in  Act  1,  Scene  2, 
the  King  says,  "To  be  contracted  in  one  brow  of  woe," 
and  in  Patient  Grissel,  Dekker  says,  "On  these,  your 
postures,  a  contracted  brow."  In  Act  2,  Scene  2,  Hamlet 
says,  '"Tis  not  alone  my  inky  cloak";  while  in  Fort., 
A.  2,  Dekker  says,  "This  inky  thread."  In  Act  1,  Scene  3, 
Polonius  says,  "For  the  apparel  oft  proclaims  the  man"; 
while  Dekker  in  Fortunatus,  A.  5,  S.  2,  says,  "  For  apparel 
is  but  the  shadow  of  a  man."  In  Act  1,  Scene  4,  Hamlet 
says,  "That  thou  dead  corse  again  in  complete  steel"; 


HAMLET   AND    THE    WINTER'S   TALE,  485 

while  Dekker  in  Satiro-mastix  says,  "First,  to  arm  our 
wits  with  complete  steel  of  Judgment."  Hamlet  says, 
"  And  you  yourself  shall  keep  the  key  of  it" ;  while  Dekker, 
in  Northward  Hoe,  says,  "And  your  self  shall  keep  the 
key  of  it."  Hamlet  says,  "Brief  chronicles  of  the  times," 
and  Dekker,  in  Knight's  Conjuring,  says,,  "very  brief 
chronicles."  Hamlet  says,  "But  I  am  pigeon-livered  and 
lack  gall,"  and  in  the  Honest  Whore,  Act  1,  Scene  5, 
Dekker  says,  "Sure  he's  a  pigeon,  for  he  has  no  gall." 
Hamlet  says,  "Or  to  take  arms  against  a  sea  of  troubles." 
In  Wonders  of  a  Kingdom,  Dekker  says,  "In  such  a  sea 
of  trouble  that  comes  rolling."  Hamlet  says,  "This  man 
shall  set  me  packing,"  while  Dekker,  in  2  H.  W.,  says, 
"And  send  her  packing."  The  King  says,  "Diseases 
desperate  grown  by  desperate  appliances  are  relieved"; 
and  in  Match  Me  in  London,  Dekker  says,  "To  desperate 
wounds,  let's  apply  desperate  cure."  Hamlet  says,  "This 
might  be  the  pate  of  a  politician" ;  and  Dekker,  in  1  H.  W., 
Scene  10,  says,  "Perhaps  this  shrewd  pate  was  mine 
enemy's." 

The  following  exclamations,  found  in  Dekker's  works, 
are  identical,  "  By  the  mass;  Can  you  advise  me;  Excellent 
well ;  Let  her  be  round  with  him ;  Like  fruit  unripe ;  Mass, 
I  can  not  tell;  perdy;  Take  heed;  Well,  God-a-mercy; 
Will  you  be  ruled  by  me ;  Zounds." 

Among  the  unusual  words  are,  "hugger-mugger,  jig 
maker,  over-peering,  pocky,  quiddets,  and  sweaty." 

My  opinion,  based  upon  the  foregoing  facts,  is  that 
Michael  Drayton  and  Thomas  Dekker  participated  in  the 
framing  of  the  play  of  Hamlet  for  the  stage,  and  that 
Francis  Bacon  took  the  play  and  made  it  what  it  now  is. 
To  me  it  is  quite  evident  that  some  superior  intellect  took 


486  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

the  soliloquy  which  I  have  quoted,  and  indeed  all  of  the 
play,  and  transformed  it  into  the  beautiful  and  captivat- 
ing shape  in  which  it  appeared  in  1623. 

The  Winter's  Tale  is  not  referred  to  in  Henslowe's 
Diary,  unless  the  following  entry,  which  appears  at  page 
167,  refers  to  it:  "Lent  unto  Robert  Shaw,  the  2  of  Aprell 
1600,  for  to  by  a  Robe  for  Tyme  some  of  XXX  s."  This 
may,  and  probably  does,  refer  to  Time,  the  Chorus  who 
comes  upon  the  stage  at  the  beginning  of  the  fourth  act. 
And  if  it  does,  the  play  must  have  been  wTitten  before  the 
spring  of  1600.  There  is  an  entry  on  page  29,  and  the 
only  one  in  the  Diary  which  might  refer  to  the  Winter's 
Tale,  and  if  it  did,  the  comedy  must  have  been  written 
before  1592.  The  entry  is  as  follows:  ''R'd  at  the  gelyous 
comodey  the  5  of  Janewary  1592  XXXIV  s."  Henslowe, 
of  course,  means  the  "Jealous  Comedy,"  but  he  gives  no 
name  to  the  comedy.  As  the  Winter's  Tale  was  founded 
wholly,  as  all  the  commentators  admit,  upon  Greene's 
novel  of  "  Pandosto,  or  the  history  of  Dorastus  and  Faunia," 
which  was  printed  in  1588,  it  is  not  improbable  that  the 
Winter's  Tale  was  the  "Jealous  Comedy"  of  Henslowe, 
and  that  it  originally  appeared  on  the  stage  before  1594. 
This  suggestion  as  to  the  first  appearance  of  the  play  is 
supported  by  the  following  fact:  In  Dido,  Queen  of  Car- 
thage, by  Marlowe  and  Nash,  printed  in  1594,  a  Winter's 
Tale  is  alluded  to  in  the  following  lines: 

"  Who  would  not  undergo  all  kind  of  toil 
To  be  weU  storied  with  such  a  Winter's  Tale?" 

All  this,  however,  as  to  the  true  name  of  the  "Jealous 
Comedy,"  is  merely  conjectural,  and  the  reader  is  not 
concerned  about  the  question  either  of  identification  with 


HAMLET   AND   THE   WIXTER's   TALE.  487 

the  Jealous  Comedy  or  with  the  date  of  the  production  of 
the  Winter's  Tale. 

Verplanck  shows  that  the  writer  or  wTiters  of  the  play 
not  only  drew  the  main  plot  and  incidents  from  Greene's 
book,  but  occasionally  used  its  very  language  with  the 
same  freedom  with  which  he  or  they  employed  old  Holin- 
shed  in  the  historical  plays.  "This  is  done,"  says  Ver- 
planck, "  in  both  cases  in  such  a  manner  that  it  is  evident 
that  he  wrote  with  the  book  before  him." 

I  find  no  traces  of  Bacon's  style  or  familiar  expressions 
in  this  play.  I  can  not  believe  that  he  originated  it,  or, 
if  revised,  that  he  revised  it.  Attention  has  been  called 
to  the  words  of  Perdita  in  the  third  scene  of  the  fourth 
act,  beginning  thus: 

''Out,  alas! 
You'd  be  so  lean  that  blasts  of  January" 

as  embodying  Bacon's  enumeration  and  description  of 
flowers.  But  the  words  of  Perdita  are  directly  in  line 
with  Drayton's  prose  and  poetical  references  to  flowers, 
and  the  poetry  of  the  Winter's  Tale  tallies  exactly  with 
the  style  of  Drayton  and  Dekker.  I  will  briefly  give  some 
examples  of  similarity  in  the  iLse  of  words  and  phrases, 
beginning  with  Drayton. 

The  following  words  in  this  play,  the  most  of  which  are 
found  only  once  in  the  plays,  are  also  peculiar  to  Drayton. 
Those  occurring  but  once  are  first  given  alphabetically: 

"Amazedly,  ampler,  behind-hand,  clipping,  fixure, 
forceful,  forewarn,  hardened,  hornpipes,  hovering,  indus- 
triously, limber,  magnificence,  missingly,  multiply,  poman- 
der, pranked-up,  reiterate,  scanted,  singularities,  stupid, 
surpassing,  wafting,  caparison,  cogitation,  hent,  ponderous, 


488  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

slackness,  sneaping,  thwack,  tincture,  verier.''  Expres- 
sions either  identical  or  almost  so  are,  "  And  see  it  instantly; 
as  driven  snow;  damask  roses;  fortune  speed  us:  homely 
shepherd;  I  conjure  thee;  in  the  behalf  of:  in  respect  of; 
it  shall  scarce  boot  me;  kites  and  ravens;  methinks  I  see; 
more  straining  on:  reverse  thy  doom;  she  had  just  cause; 
stuck  in  ears;  think'st  thou;  what  case  stand  I  in:  wolves 
and  bears." 

I  recognize  the  hand  of  Thomas  Dekker  in  this  play  by 
the  follo"wing  familiar  expressions,  used  in  the  Winter's 
Tale  and  common  to  him.  They  are:  "And  no  more  ado; 
aye,  prithee;  be  advised:  by  this  good  light;  fie,  fie;  get 
you  hence;  go  to,  go  to:  hang  him;  imagine  me:  in  my 
conscience;  lend  me  thy  hand;  O'er  head  and  ears." 

Words  used  only  once  in  the  plays  and  also  used  by 
Dekker  are :  "  Doxy,  ebb'd,  fantastical,  fooleries,  ham- 
mered, imprudently,  prognostication,  and  tittle  tattling." 

Ben  Jonson's  fling  at  the  writer  of  the  Winter's  Tale, 
that  ''he  wanted  art  and  sometimes  sense"  has  been  here- 
tofore alluded  to,  and  the  reason  given  by  Ben,  that  the 
writer  pictured  Bohemia  as  having  a  seacoast,  when  the 
sea  was  not  within  a  hundred  miles,  certainly  fits  Dekker 
very  well,  for  he,  of  all  the  writers  of  plays  in  that  era, 
was  the  one  who  cared  least  for  the  unities  and  proprieties 
either  of  place  or  time. 

The  reader  will  notice  that  in  these  examinations,  I 
have  singled  out  Michael  Drayton  and  Thomas  Dekker  as 
active  participants  in  the  composition  of  some  of  the 
so-called  Shakespeare  plays.  Michael  Drayton  particularly 
has  impressed  himself  upon  me  as  one  of  the  chief  com- 
posers of  some  of  the  plays,  either  as  an  originator  or 
reviser.     The  fact  that  he  was  a  scholar,  a  churchman,  a 


HAMLET    AND    THE    WINTER'S    TALE.  489 

thorough  Protestant,  a  great  lover  of  his  country,  a  good, 
careful,  and  laborious  poet,  a  wag,  full  of  wit  and  humor 
and  given  to  coarse  merriment,  a  Warwickshire  man, 
familiar  with  the  Warwickshire  dialect,  a  poetical  historian, 
a  trusted  associate  and  protege  of  courtiers  and  noblemen, 
and  an  admirer  and  lover  of  the  gentle  sex,  presents  a 
strong  circumstance  in  behalf  of  my  opinion;  and  when 
added  to  the  similarity  between  his  style  and  that  of  one 
of  the  chief  writers  of  the  plays,  is  very  convincing  to  the 
impartial  mind.  Born  in  the  forest  of  Arden,  he  causes 
Arden  to  say: 

"  Of  all  the  forests  here  within  this  mighty  Isle, 
If  those  old  Britons  then,  we  sovereign  did  instile, 
I  needs  must  be  the  great'st;  for  greatness  'tis  alone 
That  gives  our  kind  the  place." 

Drayton  had  the  genius  and  the  ability  to  create  a 
Rosalind,  a  Celia,  and  an  Orlando  and  place  them  in  the 
forest  of  Arden.  I  trace  him  in  Cymbeline,  in  Antony 
and  Cleopatra,  in  Coriolanus,  and  in  Macbeth. 

Thomas  Dekker  has  also  impressed  me  as  a  careless, 
witty,  and  at  times  eloquent  participator  in  the  making 
of  some  of  the  plays,  for  the  reason  that  his  style,  as  shown 
in  his  own  plays,  can  be  traced  in  some  of  the  Shakespeare 
plays,  and  for  the  further  reason  that,  living  as  he  did 
from  hand  to  mouth,  he  cared  nothing  for  the  question  of 
proprietorship  in  a  play,  or  if  he  did,  he  would  cheaply 
sell  the  product  of  his  brain.  If  the  reader  will,  for 
instance,  turn  to  the  play  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  Act  4, 
Scene  5,  and  carefully  read  what  appears  there  after  the 
words  "  Enter  Peter,"  he  will  find  a  good  illustration  of 
Dekker's  style,  and  not  only  of  Dekker's  style,  but  of  his 


490  THE   SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

peculiarities.  He  was  very  fond  of  the  phrase  "music 
with  her  silver  sound."  This  is  a  quotation  from  a  poem 
by  Richard  Edwards,  in  the  ^'Paradise  of  Dainty  Devices," 
and  is  quoted  thrice  in  the  scene  in  Romeo  and  Juliet 
above  referred  to.     Dekker  uses  it  in  Fortunatus,  thus: 

"Yet,  I  feel  nothing  here  to  make  me  rich; 
Here's  no  sweet  music  with  her  silver  sound." 

He  uses  it  again  in  the  same  comedy  and  also  in  Satiro- 
mastix. 

Another  peculiarity  of  Dekker's,  that  of  leaving  out  the 
preposition,  is  noticeable  in  Fortunatus,  Act  4,  Scene  1. 
There  Dekker  says,  "Doom  me  some  easier  death";  while 
in  Romeo  and  Juliet,  Act  3,  Scene  1,  Benvolio  says, 
"Stand  not  amazed — the  prince  will  doom  thee  death." 

I  have  not  undertaken  to  add  to  the  tracings  by  the 
Baconians  of  Bacon's  hand  in  the  plays,  either  as  a  reviser 
or  originator,  because  that  field  has  been  well  cultivated, 
and  what  I  have  suggested  may  lead  to  greater  cultivation. 
Neither  have  I  troubled  myself  with  what  Ben  Jonson  has 
wTitten  on  the  subject,  for,  as  to  him,  I  have  adopted  the 
opinion  which  Drummond  gave  to  the  world  when  he  said 
that  Jonson  was  "a  great  lover  and  praiser  of  himself,  a 
contemner  and  scorner  of  others;  given  rather  to  lose  a 
friend  than  a  jest;  jealous  of  every  word  and  action  of 
those  about  him,  especially  after  drink,  which  is  one  of  the 
elements  in  which  he  lived  and  a  dissembler  of  the  parts 
which  reigned  in  him." 

If  what  I  have  written  will  help  to  throw  light  upon 
the  authorship  of  the  Shakespeare  plays,  I  shall  be  abun- 
dantly repaid  for  my  labor,  recognizing,  as  I  do,  that  it  is 
imperfect  and  incomplete. 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 

THE   DRAMATIC   ROMANCE   OF   CYMBELINE. 

'■  More  particulars  must  justify  my  knowledqe." 

— Cymbeline,  ii,  4. 

So  far  as  is  now  known,  the  play  of  Cymbeline  did  not 
appear  in  print  until  1623.  It  is  really  not  a  tragedy,  but 
rather,  as  Hazlitt  terms  it,  a  dramatic  romance.  The 
studious  reader  will  notice  that  the  writer  or  writers  paid 
little  or  no  attention  to  antiquarian  or  historical  accuracy. 
Dr.  Johnson  finds  fault  with  "the  folly  of  the  fiction  and 
the  absurdity  of  the  conduct"  as  well  as  "the  confusion  of 
names  and  manners  of  different  periods."  Malone  notices 
that  the  writer  has  peopled  Rome,  not  with  real  Romans, 
but  with  modern  Italians,  such  for  instance  as  Philario 
and  lachimo,  while  another  critic  calls  attention  to  the 
writer's  mistake  in  using  the  expression  "three  thousand 
pounds"  of  tribute.  Such  absurdity  and  carelessness 
would  indicate  that  the  writer  or  writers  wrote  hastily 
and  as  if  they  were  not  in  the  habit  of  analyzing  every 
character  and  every  country.  The  first  thought  in  the 
mind  of  the  student  who  is  at  all  familiar  with  any  of  the 
plays  of  Thomas  Dekker,  as  for  instance  his  Satiro-mastix, 
will  be  that  such  confusion  and  such  anachronisms  as  are 
displayed  in  Cymbeline  indicate  that  Thomas  Dekker  had 
a  hand  in  its  composition.  They  certainly  indicate  that 
Francis  Bacon,  had  he  originally  composed  a  play  founded 
on  the  name  and  reign  of  an  ancient  English  king,  would 
have  been  careful  as  to  descriptions,  whether  of  name, 


492  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

costume,  household  appHances,  or  manners.  Bacon  never 
would  have  caused  Imogen  to  say: 

''  And  if  thou  canst  awake  by  four  o'  the  clock, 
I  pray  thee,  call  me." 

Neither  would  he  have  permitted  lachimo  to  introduce  a 
clock  into  a  Roman  mansion,  as  one  of  the  writers  thus 
does  in  Act  5,  Scene  5: 

"  Upon  a  time  (unhappy  was  the  clock 
That  struck  the  hour!)  it  was  in  Rome  (accurs'd 
The  mansion  where)." 

But  Dekker,  as  his  readers  know,  would  not  hesitate  to 
violate  any  or  all  of  the  unities  of  time  or  place  or  cir- 
cumstance. 

We  have  one  reliable  means  of  fixing  a  time  anterior  to 
which  this  play  must  have  been  written;  and  the  diary, 
not  of  Philip  Henslowe,  but  that  of  the  noted  astrologer 
Dr.  Simon  Forman,  enables  us  to  do  so.  He  notes  the  fact 
that  he  heard  the  play  in  1610.  It  does  not  appear  in 
Henslowe's  Diary,  unless  called  by  a  name  not  easily 
recognizable.  Who  composed  the  play?  I  trace  at  least 
two  original  composers  in  it.  One  of  them  was  Michael 
Drayton  and  another  was  Thomas  Dekker. 

In  addition  to  the  general  resemblance  in  style,  I  call 
attention  to  a  few  peculiarities  in  the  use  of  words  and 
phrases  which  serve  to  identify  the  two  dramatists  above 
named  as  composers  in  part  at  least  of  this  play. 

What  dramatist  of  the  time  besides  Drayton  used  the 
word  "whenas"?  I  can  find  no  other.  In  the  Barons' 
Wars  he  used  the  word  twelve  times.  In  the  third  canto, 
"whenas"  is  the  initial  word  of  stanzas  2,  3,  and  4.     The 


THE    DRAMATIC    ROMANCE    OF    CYMBELINE.  493 

editor  of  this  poem,  printed  in  Morley's  Universal  Library, 
commenting  on  this  word,  says,  "note  the  not  unfrequent 
use  (especially  in  the  Barons'  Wars)  of  '  when '  where  we 
should  now  write  '  then '  in  passing  from  one  incident  of  a 
story  to  the  next.  Also  the  use  of  the  word  '  and'  where  we 
should  now  write  '  also.'  "  The  use  of  this  word  is  notable 
in  the  book  or  document  which  Posthumus  picks  up  and 
reads  thus,  in  Act  4,  Scene  5: 

""Wlienas  a  lion's  whelp  shall  to  himself  unknown, 
without  seeking  find,  and  be  embraced  by  a  piece  of  tender 
air;  and  when  from  a  stately  cedar  shall  be  lopped  branches, 
which  being  dead  many  years  shall  after  revive,  be  joined 
to  the  old  stock  and  freshly  grow;  then  shall  Posthumus 
end  his  miseries,  Britain  be  fortunate  and  flourish  in  peace 
and  plenty." 

This  is  repeated  toward  the  close  of  the  play  in  the  last 
scene  of  Act  5. 

But  there  are  other  striking  resemblances.  The  word 
''azure,"  used  once  only  in  the  plays,  is  used  thus  by 
lachimo  in  describing  the  eyes  of  Imogen: 

''AMiite  and  azure,  lac'd  with  blue  of  heaven's  own 
tint." 

Drayton,  in  an  ode  to  his  coy  love,  says : 

"With  azure  rivers  branch'd." 

The  word  "azured, "  used  twice  only  in  the  plays,  is 
used  by  Arviragus  thus : 

"Nor  the  azur'd  harebell,  like  thy  veins." 

The  same  word  is  used  by  Drayton  in  the  letter  of  King 
Edward  to  Mrs.  Shore. 


494  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

The  word  ''commix"  is  used  once  only  in  the  plays. 
In  Act  4,  Scene  2,  Arviragus  says: 

"To  commix 
With  winds  that  sailors  rail  at." 

Drayton,  in  Pol.  1,  page  135,  says: 

"To  commix  with  frail  mortality." 

"Foreshowed"  is  another  word  used  once  only  in  the 
plays.    The  soothsayer,  in  Act  5,  Scene  2,  says: 

"Which  foreshowed  our  princely  eagle." 

In  the  Barons'  Wars,  C.  5,  S.  61,  Drayton  says: 

"His  fainting  spirit  foreshowing  danger  nigh." 

The  word  "paled"  is  used  once  only  in  the  plays  and 
by  the  Queen  in  Act  3,  Scene  1,  thus: 

"As  Neptune's  park,  ribb'd  and  paled  in." 

While  in  Eleanor  to  Duke  Humphrey,  Drayton  says: 

"And  made  the  moon  pause  in  her  paled  sphere." 

"Satiate"  is  found  once  only  in  the  plays,  and  in  Act  1, 
Scene  7,  lachimo  is  made  to  say : 

"That  satiate  yet  unsatisfied  desire." 

Drayton,  in  Idea,  says: 

"  And  every  drudge  doth  dull  our  satiate  ear." 


THE    DRAMATIC   ROMANCE    OF   CYMBELINE.  495 

The  word  ''sluggish,"  found  once  only  in  the  plays, 
appears  in  Cymbeline  in  Act  4,  Scene  2.  Belarius,  believ- 
ing Imogen  to  be  dead,  exclaims : 

"0,  melancholy! 
\Vhoever  yet  could  sound  thy  bottom?  find 
The  ooze  to  show  what  coast  thy  sluggish  crare 
Might  easily  harbor  in?" 

The  word  is  a  Draytonian  word,  used  thus  in  Pol.  2, 
p.  430: 

''Rousing  the  sluggish  villages  from  sleep." 

The  reader  will  note  also  the  word  "crare"  printed  in 
the  original  as  care.  But  a  crare  or  craier  is  a  small 
vessel  or  boat,  and  the  word  which  is  used  by  Drayton 
fits  the  sense. 

The  apostrophe  to  melancholy  is  also  directly  in  Dray- 
ton's vein.  His  readers  will  recall  his  "0,  spectacle," 
"0,  bloody  age,"  "O,  misery"  as  found  in  his  writings, 
especially  in  his  Barons'  Wars.  Posthumus,  in  Act  5, 
Scene  3,  uses  the  same  Draytonian  expression,  "0,  noble 
misery." 

The  word  "workmanship,"  occurring  but  once  in  the 
plays,  appears  in  Act  2,  Scene  4.     lachimo  says : 

"  So  bravely  done,  so  rich  that  it  did  strive 
In  workmanship  and  value." 

In  the  Quest  of  Cynthia,  Drayton  says: 

"The  curious  workmanship  to  see." 

and  in  Pol.  1,  Song  6,  he  says: 

"The  workmanship  so  rare." 


496  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

The  word  "amplify"  is  found  only  twice  in  the  plays. 
In  Act  1,  Scene  6,  the  Queen  says: 

"Is't  not  meet 
That  I  did  amplify  my  judgment  in." 

and  Drayton,  in  Pol.  2,  p.  184,  says: 

"To  amplify  her  dower." 

Other  like  examples  can  be  cited,  as  crystalline,  dis- 
honestly, eglantine,  fanes,  mutation,  o'erborne,  resumed, 
rosy,  sluttery,  and  verier. 

The  reader's  attention  is  especially  directed  to  the 
phrase  similarities  in  scenes  six  and  seven  of  Act  1 . 

In  the  first-named  scene  the  following  occur: 

The  Queen  says : 

"His  fortunes  all  lie  speechless." 
Drayton,  in  Divorce,  says: 

"Passion  speechless  lies." 

The  Queen  also  says: 

"And  his  name 
Is  at  last  gasp." 

while  Drayton,  in  Barons'  Wars,  C.  5,  S.  64,  says: 

"Could  any  strength  afford  to  his  last  gasp." 

He  uses  the  same  phrase  in  his  Divorce.  The  Queen 
says: 


THE   DRAMATIC   ROMANCE   OF   CTMBELINE.  497 

"It  is  an  earnest  of  a  further  good," 
while  in  Shore  to  King  Edward,  Drayton  says: 
"In  earnest  of  a  greater  good  we  owe." 
Again  the  Queen  says: 

"  Tell  thy  mistress  how 
The  case  stands  with  her." 

In  Idea,  S.  24,  Drayton  says : 

"So  stands  the  case  with  me." 

Cornelius  says,  "I  humbly  take  my  leave";  and  in 
his  Dedication  to  Harmony,  Drayton  uses  the  same 
expression. 

In  the  seventh  scene  of  the  same  act  the  resemblances 
are  also  very  striking.  lachimo  says,  "She  is  alone  the 
Arabian  bird."  In  King  John  to  Matilda,  Drayton  says, 
"The  Arabian  bird  that  never  is  but  one." 

lachimo  says,  "To  know  if  your  affiance  were  deeply 
rooted."  In  Barons'  Wars,  C.  2,  S.  2,  Drayton  says, 
"For  deadly  hate,  so  long  and  deeply  rooted." 

lachimo  says,  "Be  not  angry,  most  mighty  princess"; 
in  Queen  Margaret  to  Suffolk,  Drayton  says,  "  Yet  be  not 
angry  that  I  warn  thee  thus." 

lachimo  says,  "That  I  have  adventured  to  try  your 
taking  of  a  false  report."  In  his  dedication  to  the  Muses' 
Elysium,  Drayton  says,  "I  have  often  adventured  upon 
desperate  untrodden  ways";  and  he  uses  the  same  expres- 
sion in  Pol.  2,  p.  264;  and  in  Heroical  Epistles,  page  173, 
he  says,  "Had  I  adventured  thus." 


498  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

"Cannot  choose  but"  is  used  by  lachimo  in  this  scene, 
and  it  is  also  used  in  Act  2,  Scene  3.  Drayton  uses  it  in 
King  Edward  to  Shore. 

"Noble  friend"  is  used  in  this  scene  and  also  in  the 
fifth  scene  of  the  same  act ;  and  Drayton  begins  his  Epistle 
to  Jeffreys  thus,  "My  noble  friend,  you  challenge  me  to 
write." 

In  Act  2,  Scene  2,  lachimo  says,  "As  slippery  as  the 
Gordian  knot  was  hard."  In  Howard  to  Geraldine, 
Drayton  says,  "And  Gordian  knots  do  curiously  entwine-" 

In  the  fourth  scene  of  the  same  act,  Posthumus  says : 

"  It  is  a  basilisk  unto  mine  eye ; 
KiUs  me  to  look  on't." 

In  Matilda,  Drayton  says,  "WTiose  eye  seemed  as  the 
basilisk  to  kill." 

In  Act  5,  Scene  4,  the  words  are,  "That  could  stand 
up  his  parallel."  In  Pol.  3,  p.  14,  Drayton  says,  "A 
parallel  may  stand." 

Jupiter  says,  in  the  same  scene,  "This  tablet  lay  upon 
his  breast."  In  Duke  Robert,  Drayton  says,  "On  her 
fair  breast,  she  two  broad  tablets  bore." 

I  caU  attention  also  to  the  expressions  "not  a  whit, 
how  deeply,  to  run  the  country  base  and  be  not  angry." 
AU  of  them  are  used  in  the  plays  and  by  Drayton. 

The  Warwickshire  words  used  in  this  play  may  be 
properly  attributed  to  Drayton,  who  was  a  native  of  that 
county. 

When  Imogen,  known  as  Fidele  to  the  two  brothers,  is 
carried  as  dead  in  the  arms  of  Arviragus,  and  the  brothers 
indulge  in  lamentation  over  the  body  of  the  supposed 
pretty  boy,  Arviragus  says: 


THE    DRAMATIC    ROMANCE    OF    CYMBELIXE.  499 

"With  fairest  flowers, 
"\^^lilst  summer  lasts,  and  I  live  here,  Fidele, 
I'll  sweeten  thy  sad  grave:  Thou  shalt  not  lack 
The  flower,  that's  like  thy  face,  pale  primrose;  nor 
The  azur'd  harebell  like  thy  veins;  no,  nor 
The  leaf  of  eglantine,  whom  not  to  slander, 
Out-sweetened  not  thy  breath:  the  ruddock  would 
With  charitable  bill  (0  bill  sore  shaming  . 
Those  rich-left  heirs,  that  let  their  fathers  lie 
Without  a  monument!)  bring  thee  all  this; 
Yea,  and  furr'd  moss  besides,  when  flowers  are  none, 
To  winter-ground  thy  corse." 

Any  one  who  has  read  Drayton's  poems,  lyrical  and 
pastoral,  carefully,  will  recognize,  I  think,  the  hand  and 
style  of  Drayton  in  the  foregoing  beautiful  and  touching 
lamentation.  The  reader  will  recall  these  words  of  Dray- 
ton, ''Covering  with  moss  the  dead's  unclosed  eye.  The 
red-breast  teacheth  charity." 

Some  commentators  have  called  attention  to  the 
lamentations  of  Cornelia  in  the  Vittoria  Corombona  of 
John  Webster  as  being  an  imitation  of  it,  but  Webster 
never  was  an  imitator  of  any  one.  Cornelia's  lamentation 
mainly  brings  in  animals — the  ant,  the  field  mouse,  the 
mole,  and  the  wolf :  while  that  of  Arviragus  chiefly  specifies 
flowers,  and  the  favorite  flowers,  too,  with  which  Drayton 
loved  to  embellish  and  beautify  his  poems. 

Dekker,  I  think,  shows  himself  ver}^  conspicuously  as  a 
participant  in  the  composition  of  this  long  play  in  act  two, 
scene  one,  and  also  in  the  first  part  of  scene  three  of  the 
same  act. 

A  short  example  from  the  beginning  of  each  scene  will 
show  the  reader  the  Dekkerian  style  very  clearly.  In  the 
first  scene,  Cloten  enters  and  says: 


500  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE, 

"Was  there  ever  man  had  such  luck! 
When  I  kissed  the  Jack  upon  an  up-cast,  to  be  hit 

away! 
I  had  a  hundred  pound  on't:  And  then  a  whoreson 
Jackanapes  must  take  me  up  for  swearing;  as  if 
I  borrowed  mine  oaths  from  him,  and  might  not 
Spend  them  at  my  pleasure." 

In  this  scene  the  writer  uses  Dekker's  coarse  expres- 
sions, as  for  instance,  "  a  whoreson  Jackanapes,"  ''  whoreson 
dog,"  "a  pox  on't."  The  writer  also  makes  the  second 
Lord  describe  the  Queen  as  a  "  woman,  that  bears  all  down 
with  her  brain" — an  expression  peculiarly  the  coinage  of 
Dekker,  who  wrote  a  play  called  "Bear  a  brain." 

The  third  scene  begins  thus: 

"Your  lordship  is  the  most  patient  man  in  loss,  the 

most  coldest  that  ever  turned  up  ace. 

Cloten.  It  would  make  any  man  cold  to  lose, 

1  Lord.  But  not  every  man  patient  after  the  noble 

temper  of  your  lordship;  you  are  most  hot  and  furious 

when  you  win!" 

In  both  these  scenes  there  is  a  special  reference  to 
gambling,  and  in  the  second  one  to  gambling  by  cards. 

It  was  characteristic  of  Dekker  in  his  hasty  writing  of 
plays  and  parts  of  plays  to  introduce  card  words  and 
phrases. 

Cloten  says,  "I  am  advised  to  give  her  music  of  morn- 
ings." Dekker,  in  the  Shoemakers'  Holiday,  Act  3,  Scene 
1,  says,  "I  am  advised  that  what  I  speak  is  true." 

Attention  has  heretofore  been  called  to  the  fact,  show- 
ing two  writers  at  least  of  this  play,  that  the  words  Post- 
humus  and  Arviragus  are  each  accented  in  the  plays  in 
different  ways. 


THE    DRAMATIC   ROMANCE    OF   CYMBELINE.  501 

One  of  the  writers  of  this  play  also  makes  a  mistake, 
heretofore  adverted  to,  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  word 
"exorcist."  Thus,  Guiderius  says,  "No  exorciser  harm 
thee."  This  was  a  blunder  which  Bacon  would  not  have 
made;  but  which  Dekker  would  and  did  make.  In  his 
dedication  of  Satiro-mastix,  he  writes,  "Neither  should 
this  ghost  of  Tucca  have  walked  up  and  down  Paul's 
Churchyard,  but  that  he  was  raised  up  by  new  exorcisms." 

This  play  has  received  both  commendation  and  con- 
demnation from  the  learned  commentators.  Von  Schlegel, 
who  believed  that  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  a  play  composed  in 
part  by  Drayton,  was  one  of  the  very  best  of  the  Shake- 
speare plays,  pronounced  Cymbeline  to  be  "  one  of  Shake- 
speare's most  wonderful  compositions."  On  the  other 
hand,  Dr.  Johnson,  one  of  the  most  learned  and  compe- 
tent critics,  derided  and  ridiculed  the  play,  as  heretofore 
stated,  for  the  improbability  of  the  plot,  the  folly  of  the 
fiction,  and  the  confusion  of  the  names  and  manners. 

When  several  persons  in  Shaksper's  time  engaged  in 
the  composition  of  a  play  in  consideration  of  such  petty 
sums  as  Henslowe  and  other  managers  paid — a  play  which 
generally  had  to  be  finished  in  a  certain  time  and  perhaps 
to  please  a  capricious  audience,  a  play  so  composed,  unless 
revised  very  thoroughly  by  a  competent  and  scholarly 
dramatist,  would  justly  be  subject  to  such  severe  criticism 
as  Dr.  Johnson  pronounced  upon  Cymbeline. 

An  example  of  such  haste,  such  meagerness  of  com- 
pensation and  untrue  designation  of  the  author,  is  here 
cited. 

In  the  Stationers'  Register,  under  date  of  September 
9,  1653,  long  before  Henslowe's  Diary  was  discovered  at 
Dulwich  College,  a  play  called  "  the  famous  wars  of  Henry 


502  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

the  first  and  the  Prince  of  Wales"  was  entered  as  the  com- 
position of  R.  Davenport  and  Wilham  Shakespeare,  when 
in  fact,  as  shown  at  page  120  of  the  Diary,  Manager  Hens- 
lowe  paid  Drayton,  Dekker,  and  Chettle  for  the  play  in 
full  payment  the  paltry  sum  of  four  pounds  and  five 
shillings.  Collier,  in  a  note,  says,  "perhaps  Davenport 
only  revised  and  altered  this  piece,  which  Henslowe 
assigns  to  Drayton,  Dekker,  and  Chettle." 

But  whether  Collier's  guess  is  right  or  not,  it  is  certain 
that  Drayton,  Dekker,  and  Chettle  wrote  a  play  which  as 
late  as  1653  went  under  the  name  of  Shakespeare. 


CHAPTER  XXXIX. 

JOHN   WEBSTER   FOUND   IN   THE   PLAYS. 

"/  shall  tell  you  a  pretty  tale." 

— Coriolanus,  i,  1. 

The  men  who  have  been  brought  by  me  prominently 
before  the  reader  as  participants  either  in  the  composition 
or  revision  of  the  Shakespeare  plays,  have  been  Michael 
Drayton,  Thomas  Dekker,  Henry  Porter,  Henry  Chettle, 
Thomas  Heyw^ood,  Anthony  Monday,  and  Francis  Bacon. 
I  have  left  to  others  who  may  have  the  opportunity  and 
the  inclination  the  task  of  tracing  the  other  original  com- 
posers of  parts  of  the  plays.  Among  them  will  be  found, 
I  think,  Thomas  Middleton  and  John  Fletcher. 

But  it  would  be  hardly  fair  to  the  memory  of  John 
Webster  if  I  should  fail  to  give  him  credit,  even  if  very 
briefly,  for  a  share  in  the  composition  of  some  of  them. 

Little,  very  little,  is  kno\\m  of  Webster,  except  through 
his  works.  He  is  known  to  have  been  the  author,  among 
others,  of  the  following  plays:  The  ^ATiite  Devil,  or  the 
Tragedy  of  Vittoria  Corombona,  the  Duchess  of  Malfy, 
the  Devil's  Law-case,  Appius  and  Virginia,  and  the  Thra- 
cian  Wonder.  He  also  wrote  the  Induction  to  Marston's 
Malcontent — a  writing  which  attests  his  skill  in  composi- 
tion and  his  adaptation  to  the  demands  of  a  promiscuous 
audience  at  the  theatre.  He  was,  as  I  have  already  shown, 
a  participant  in  the  composition  of  the  Fall  of  Julius 
Csesar,  m  company  with  Monday,  Drayton,  and  Middle- 
ton;  and  the  Diary  of  Henslowe  proves  that  he  was  the 
author  of  the  Guise,  the  entry  being  as  follows,  at  page  202 : 


504  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

"Lent  unto  William  Jube,  the  3  of  No\Tnbr  1901  to 
bye  stamell  clothe  for  a  clocke  for  the  Gwisse  lis  Web- 
ster"; and  on  the  next  page  Henslowe  made  an  entry  that 
he  had  paid  "  the  littell  tayller  upon  his  bell  for  mackynge 
of  sewtes  for  the  Gwesse  the  some  of  XX  s." 

The  times  of  his  birth  and  his  death  are  unknown.  He 
was  Clerk  of  the  parish  of  St.  Andrew,  Holborn,  and  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Merchant  Tailors'  Company.  He  was  married 
on  July  25,  1590,  at  St.  Leonard's  Church,  Shoreditch,  to 
Isabel  Sutton.  It  is  evident  that  he  was  very  greatly 
esteemed  by  his  contemporary  poets. 

Like  Dekker,  he  paid  very  little  attention  to  the  unities. 
Froude,  in  the  prologue  to  his  play  of  the  Duchess  of 
Malfy,  says: 

"  The  rude  old  bard,  if  critic  laws  he  knew. 
From  a  too  warm  imagination  drew, 
And  scorning  rule  should  his  free  soul  confine, 
'  Nor  time  nor  place  observ'd  in  his  design." 

It  is  a  pity  that  no  special  search  has  been  made  by 
scholars  for  letters  or  papers  of  Webster,  Drayton,  and 
Dekker.  They  were  great  poets,  whose  worth  has  never 
been  properly  appreciated. 

Webster  appears,  I  think,  in  Coriolanus,  in  the  very 
first  act  and  first  scene. 

The  mutinous  citizens  armed  with  staves,  clubs,  and 
other  weapons  were  inveighing  against  the  patricians 
when  Menenius  enters  and  says,  "  I  shall  tell  you  a  pretty 
tale";  and  thereupon  he  repeats  the  fable  of  the  revolt  of 
the  other  members  of  the  body  against  the  belly.  As  I 
wish  the  reader  to  judge  for  himself,  I  will  quote  a  small 
part  of  the  fable,  so  that  he  may  notice  the  style : 


JOHN    WEBSTER    FOUND    IN    THE    PLAYS.  505 

"  There  was  a  time  when  all  the  body's  members 
Rebelled  against  the  belly;  thus  accused  it: — 
That  only  like  a  gulf  it  did  remain 
I'  the  midst  of  the  body,  idle  and  inactive, 
Still  cupboarding  the  viands,  never  bearing 
Like  labor  with  the  rest;  where  the  other  instruments 
Did  see  and  hear,  devise,  instruct,  walk,  feel, 
And  mutually  participate,  did  minister 
Unto  the  appetite  and  affection  common 
Of  the  whole  body.     The  belly  answered, — 

1  Cit.  Well,  sir,  what  answer  made  the  belly?" 

Turning  now  to  the  second  act  of  Vittoria  Corombona, 
Webster  causes  Francisco  De  Medicis  to  interrogate 
Camillo  thus: 

"  F.  de  Med.  Have  you  any  children? 

Cam.  None,  my  Lord. 

F.  de  Med.  You  are  the  happier:  I'll  tell  you  a  tale. 
•    Cam.  Pray,  my  Lord. 

F.  de  Med.  An  old  tale. 
Upon  a  time,  Phoebus,  the  god  of  light, 
Of  him,  we  call  the  sun,  would  needs  be  married; 
The  gods  gave  their  consent,  and  Mercury 
Was  sent  to  voice  it  to  the  general  world. 
But  what  a  piteous  cry  there  straight  arose 
Amongst  smiths  and  felt-makers,  brewers  and  cooks, 
Reapers  and  butter-women,  amongst  fishmongers 
And  thousand  other  trades,  which  are  annoyed 
By  his  excessive  heat;  'twas  lamentable. 
They  come  to  Jupiter,  all  in  a  sweat 
And  do  forbid  the  banns." 

Farther  on,  in  act  four  of  the  same  play,  Webster 
indulges  in  another  tale-telling.  Flamineo,  one  of  the 
characters,  exclaims: 


506  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

"Stay,  my  lord:  I'll  tell  you  a  tale.  The  crocodile 
which  lives  in  the  river  Nilus,  hath  a  worm  breeds  in  the 
teeth  of  it,  which  puts  it  to  extreme  anguish.  A  little 
bird,  no  bigger  than  a  wren,  is  barber  surgeon  to  this 
crocodile;  flies  into  the  jaws  of  it,  picks  out  the  worm  and 
brings  present  remedy.  The  fish,  glad  of  ease,  but  ungrate- 
ful to  her  that  did  it,  that  the  bird  may  not  talk  largely 
of  her  abroad  for  non-payment,  closeth  her  chops,  intend- 
ing to  swallow  her,  and  so  put  her  to  perpetual  silence." 

I  quote  these  resemblances  to  assist  the  reader  of  the 
Shakespeare  plays  in  his  search  for  the  original  composers 
of  this  play. 

Let  us  turn  now  to  the  tragedy  of  Macbeth  and  we  find 
in  Lady  Macbeth's  sleeping  soliloquy  the  very  style  and 
words  of  Webster.  Lady  Macbeth  enters  with  a  taper, 
and  the  Doctor  who  is  watching  her  says : 

"AVhat  is  it  she  does  now?  Look,  how  she  rubs  her 
hands. 

Gent.  It  is  an  accustomed  action  with  her  to  seem 
thus  washing  her  hands.  I  have  known  her  to  continue 
in  this  a  quarter  of  an  hour. 

Lady  Mac.  Yet,  here's  a  spot. 

Doct.  Hark!  She  speaks.  I  will  set  down  what  comes 
from  her  to  satisfy  my  remembrance  the  more  strongly. 

Lady  Mac.  Out,  damned  spot!  Out,  I  say!  one;  two; 
why  then  'tis  time  to  do't. — Hell  is  murky."  And  again 
she  says,  "Here's  the  smell  of  the  blood  still;  all  the  per- 
fumes of  Arabia  will  not  sweeten  this  little  hand.  Oh, 
oh,  oh." 

In  Vittoria  Corombona,  the  Moor  says,  "Look  you  who 
are  yonder,"  and  then  the  dialogue  continues  thus: 

"Cornelia.  0,  reach  me  the  flowers. 
Moor.  Her  ladyship's  foolish. 


JOHN   WEBSTER   FOUND   IN   THE    PLAYS.  507 

Woman.  Alas,  her  grief 

Hath  turned  her  child  again. 
Cornelia.  You're  very  welcome. 

There's  rosemary  for  you  and  rue  for  you; 

Heart's  ease  for  you.     I  pray  make  much  of  it, 

I  have  left  more  for  myself;" 

and  a  little  later  on  she  says : 

"Will  you  make  me  such  a  fool? 
Here's  a  white  hand, 
Can  blood  so  soon  be  wash'd  out?" 

Here  we  are  reminded  of  the  tragedy  of  Hamlet  as  well 
as  of  Macbeth.  Other  instances  of  Webster's  handiwork 
in  the  Shakespeare  plays  might  be  cited,  but  enough  has 
been  shown  to  put  the  student  on  inquiry. 

Webster,  in  publishing  the  tragedy  of  Vittoria  Corom- 
bona,  gives  the  reader  the  reasons  why  he  took  liberties 
with  the  laws  which  should  govern  the  composition  of  a 
tragedy,  and  he  also  presents  a  very  fair  idea  of  the  class 
of  auditors  who  frequented  the  theatre  in  the  early  years 
of  the  Sixteenth  Century. 

"In  publishing  this  tragedy,"  he  says,  "I  do  but 
challenge  to  myself  that  liberty  which  other  men  have 
taken  before  me;  not  that  I  affect  praise  by  it,  for  nos 
haec  novimus  esse  nihil,  only  since  it  was  acted  in  so  open 
and  black  a  theatre  that  it  wanted  (that  which  is  the  only 
grace  and  setting-out  of  a  tragedy)  a  full  and  understand- 
ing auditory;  and  that  since  that  day,  I  have  noted  most 
of  the  people  that  come  to  that  play-house  resemble  those 
ignorant  asses  who  visiting  stationers'  shops,  their  use  is 
not  to  inquire  for  good  books,  but  new  books.  I  present 
it  to  the  general  view  with  this  confidence. 


508  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

"  Nec  rhoncos  vietues  maliqnorum 
Nee  scombris  tunicas  dabis  molestas. 

"If  it  be  objected  that  this  is  no  true  dramatic  poem, 
I  shall  easily  confess  it;  willingly  and  not  ignorantly  have 
I  faulted.  For,  should  a  man  present  to  such  an  auditory 
the  most  sententious  tragedy  that  ever  was  wTitten, 
observing  all  the  critical  laws,  as  height  of  style  and  gravity 
of  person;  enrich  it  with  the  most  sententious  chorus,  and 
as  it  were,  enliven  death,  in  the  passionate  and  weighty 
nuntius;  yet,  after  all  this  divine  rapture,  0  dura  messorum 
ilia,  the  breath  that  comes  from  the  incapable  multitude 
is  able  to  poison  it." 

Theobald  properly  characterizes  him  when  he  says 
that  Webster  had  a  strong  and  impetuous  genius. 

Some  of  my  readers  may  think  that  I  am  singular  in 
my  belief  that  there  is  a  resemblance  between  Webster's 
style  and  that  of  the  writer  or  one  of  the  writers  of  the 
Shakespeare  plays.  I  find,  however,  that  I  have  a  little 
support  from  James  Russell  Lowell.  I  say  a  little  support, 
because  when  he  wrote  his  "Old  English  Dramatists" 
he  was  a  believer  in  Shaksper  as  the  author  of  the  Shake- 
speare plays.  Commenting  upon  Webster's  play  of 
Appius  and  Virginia,  at  page  75  of  the  above-mentioned 
work,  Lowell  calls  it  "a  spirited,  well-conducted  play  and 
as  good  as  any  other  founded  on  the  Roman  story,  except 
Shakespeare's."  A  little  farther  on,  at  page  76,  he  says, 
"It  has  always  interested  me  to  find  in  Webster  more 
obvious  reminiscences  of  Shakespeare  without  conscious 
imitation  of  him  than  any  other  dramatist  of  the  time." 
Another  critic,  Dye,  writing  of  the  same  play,  says  "This 
drama  is  so  remarkable  for  its  simplicity,  its  deep  pathos, 
its  unobtrusive  beauties,   its  singleness  of  plot,  and  the 


JOHN   WEBSTER    FOUND    IN    THE    PLAYS.  509 

easy,  unimpeded  march  of  its  story,  that  perhaps  there  are 
readers  who  will  prefer  it  to  any  other  of  our  author's 
productions." 

A  little  reliable  and  practical  knowledge  of  the  man's 
life,  his  occupation,  his  family  and  business  relations 
would  be  very  entertaining  to  the  reader  of  English  litera- 
ture. Here  was  a  very  learned  and  excellent  poet  of  whom 
we  know  very  little,  and  yet  the  material  ought  to  be 
found  somewhere  in  England,  by  the  careful  investigator, 
out  of  which  an  interesting  biography  might  be  written. 

Such  an  investigation  should  not  be  confined  to  Web- 
ster's life-history,  but  it  should  extend  to  a  patient  tracing 
of  the  lives,  letters,  and  manuscripts  of  Anthony  Monday, 
Michael  Drayton,  Henry  Chettle,  Henry  Porter,  John 
Fletcher,  Thomas  Dekker,  and  Thomas  Middleton.  The 
search  heretofore  has  been  in  the  wrong  direction.  Oldys, 
Malone,  Phillips,  Collier,  and  other  scholars  have  been 
deluded  by  the  Shaksper  ignis  fatuus  and  have  gone  astray 
in  a  vain  pursuit. 

With  the  ignorant  Shaksper  abandoned,  the  pathway 
of  discovery  will  be  clear.  The  light  of  truth  is  beginning 
to  illuminate  the  road  which  leads  to  the  true  composers 
and  revisers  of  the  Shakespeare  plays. 


CHAPTER  XL. 

A    SHORT   SUMMING-UP. 

''  The  end  crowns  all, 
And  that  old  common  arbitrator,  Time, 
Will  one  day  end  it." 

— Troilus  and  Cressida,  iv,  5. 

In  the  single  issue  first  presented  and  discussed  in  this 
volume,  while  the  evidence  is  mainly  circumstantial,  it  is, 
in  part,  direct.  The  circumstantial  evidence  rests  upon 
presumptions  of  fact;  or,  in  other  words,  the  fact  that 
William  Shaksper  of  Stratford-on-Avon  did  not  write  the 
plays  is  an  inference  from  other  facts  that  have  been  either 
admitted  or  established  by  proof. 

The  true  rule,  both  of  law  and  reason,  is  that  when 
direct  evidence  of  facts  can  not  be  supplied,  reasonable 
minds  will  necessarily  form  their  judgment  on  circum- 
stances and  act  upon  the  probabilities  of  the  proposition 
under  consideration.  To  apply  the  words  of  Lord  Mans- 
field in  the  Douglas  case,  ''As  mathematical  or  absolute 
certainty  is  seldom  to  be  attained  in  human  affairs,  reason 
and  public  utility  require  that  judges  and  all  mankind, 
in  forming  their  opinion  of  the  truth  of  facts,  should  be 
regulated  by  the  superior  number  of  probabilities  on  the 
one  side  or  the  other,  whether  the  amount  of  these  proba- 
bilities be  expressed  in  words  and  arguments  or  by  figures 
and  numbers."  When,  therefore,  the  circumstantial  evi- 
dence is  very  strong  and  sufficient  and  is  also  supported 
and  confirmed  by  direct  evidence,  then,  to  use  the  language 
of  a  great  law-writer,  "human  reason  can  not  do  other- 


A    SHORT   SUMMING-UP.  511 

wise  than  adopt  the  conclusion  to  which  the  proof  tends." 
Now,  what  are  the  facts  which  severally  raise  presump- 
tions in  favor  of  the  proposition  that  Shaksper  did  not 
write  the  plays  and  poems?  As  heretofore  stated  and 
shown  by  unimpeachable  facts,  it  is  in  evidence  that 
Shaksper  was  never  employed  to  write  plays,  either  singly 
or  in  collaboration,  by  Philip  Henslowe,  the  principal 
theatre-manager  in  London  and  the  man  who  secured  the 
services  of  the  best  playwriters  of  the  time  for  English 
audiences,  and  Shaksper's  name  is  not  even  mentioned  in 
the  Diary  kept  by  the  manager,  as  it  certainly  would  have 
been  had  Shaksper  written  plays  for  the  theater.  There  is 
no  evidence,  and  none  can  be  adduced,  that  Shaksper  was 
ever  employed  by  any  one  to  write  plays. 

It  is  also  in  evidence  that  he  commended  no  contempo- 
rary, although  it  was  the  custom  of  the  poets  and  drama- 
tists of  his  time  to  furnish  commendatory  and  compli- 
mentary lines  to  accompany  the  books  of  brother  poets, 
and  during  his  lifetime  no  book  was  issued  in  his  name, 
either  with  or  without  his  authorization,  in  which  he  was 
commended  by  any  one,  either  in  prose  or  poetry. 

It  is  also  in  evidence  that  he  left  no  letters,  no  brief 
note,  no  manuscript,  no  fragment  even  of  a  writing  of  any 
kind  except  certain  signatures  wretchedly  written  to 
certain  legal  documents,  to  indicate  that  he  was  either  a 
scholar  or  a  person  habituated  to  writing.  In  connection 
with  this  remarkable  circumstance  is  the  further  fact  that 
for  nearly  three  centuries  the  most  minute  and  exhaustive 
search  has  been  made  by  indefatigable  admirers  of  the 
supposed  author  in  every  nook  and  cranny  of  England  to 
find  some  writing  in  aid  of  the  Shaksper  claim,  but  all  in 
vain. 


512  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

It  is  also  in  evidence  that  Shaksper  had  no  Hbrary. 
Even  his  great  advocate,  Halhwell-Phinips,  admits  that  he 
possessed  no  Hbrary.  And  what  is  a  workman  worth 
without  the  tools  of  his  trade?  What  is  a  scholar  good 
for  without  books,  especially  when  he  undertakes  to  make 
all  knowledge  his  province? 

It  is  also  in  evidence  that  William  Shaksper  gave  his 
children  no  education  whatever.  His  daughters  were 
ignorant  women  who  were  suffered  by  him  to  grow  up 
from  childhood  in  ignorance.  This  fact  is  clearly  and 
conclusively  established.  It  is  hard,  yes,  improbable — I 
should  rather  sa}^,  impossible — to  believe  that  the  man.  who 
invented  a  Portia,  a  Viola,  and  a  Rosalind,  would  have 
failed  to  educate  his  own  children.  Yet  the  Shaksper 
worshiper  must  so  believe. 

And  then  there  is  the  uncontradicted  evidence  that 
Shaksper  was  utterly  indifferent  to  literary  proprieties. 
Although  books  were  issued  which  he  did  not  and  could 
not  write,  yet  he  neither  claimed  nor  disclaimed  the 
authorship,  but  stood  mute.  If  he  knew  that  books  not 
written  by  him  were  so  published,  he  knowingly  permitted 
a  fraud  to  be  practiced,  and  if  he  did  not  know  it,  his 
ignorance  would  suffice  to  excuse  him.  In  such  a  case  the 
presumption  would  be  that  the  indifference  could  properly 
be  charged  to  ignorance. 

Taken  now  in  connection  with  what  we  know  of  Shak- 
sper's  real  and  traditional  life,  these  facts,  severally  and 
jointly,  must  lead  all  reasonable  and  unprejudiced  minds 
to  believe  in  the  truth  of  my  proposition  that  William 
Shaksper  of  Stratford-on-Avon  did  not  write  the  plays  and 
poems  which  now  are  published  and  circulated  under  a 
name  like  his. 


A   SHORT   SUMMIXG-UP.  513 

But  when,  allied  to  all  these  facts  and  the  presumptions 
derived  therefrom,  there  is  the  clear,  positive,  and  direct 
evidence  that  Shaksper  could  not  write,  the  proposition 
of  his  inability  to  compose  the  plays  and  poems  is  unan- 
swerable. When  I  say  that  he  could  not  write,  I  may, 
without  impairing  the  force  of  my  proposition,  so  modify 
the  assertion  as  to  declare  that  he  could  not  write  with 
that  facility  which  was  absolutely  required  of  the  com- 
poser of  the  plays  and  poems. 

Reader,  you  have  before  you  the  facsimiles  of  his  sig- 
natures, the  only  writings  of  this  man  ever  found,  and  if 
you  will  carefully  study  these  facsimiles,  you  must,  if 
disinterested,  conclude  with  me  that  the  maker  of  them 
was  an  uneducated  man,  hardly  able  to  write  his  name. 

In  summing  up  as  to  the  second  proposition,  namely, 
as  to  who  wrote  the  poems  and  plays,  the  reader  will  bear 
in  mind  that  I  have  tried  to  state  facts  only,  and  while 
giving  my  own  opinion,  have  left  him  to  form  his  own 
opinion  on  the  facts  as  to  authorship. 

With  Shaksper  entirely  eliminated,  the  path  of  dis- 
covery is  open  to  every  disinterested  searcher,  and  especial- 
ly to  those  who  are  residents  of  England,  where  there  are 
greater  opportunities  for  search  than  elsewhere,  although  I 
believe  that  German  scholars  are  also  very  careful,  pains- 
taking, and  scrutinizing  searchers  after  facts  in  literature. 
They  are  preeminently  specialists. 

In  forming  the  opinion  that  Francis  Bacon  was  the 
author  of  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  I  was  compelled  thereto 
by  reason  of  the  facts  as  they  appeared  to  me.  Believing 
as  I  do  that  Pope's  familiar  lines  are  exactly  descriptive 
of  the  wise  and  learned  Bacon,  I  would  have  much  pre- 
ferred as  author  of  the  poem  the  sly,  waggish,  and  gifted 


514  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

Drayton,  who  was  a  fellow-countryman  of  Shaksper,  but 
the  peculiarities  in  the  style  of  the  poem  irresistibly  led 
to  Bacon.  I  was  tempted  to  believe  that  the  Return  from 
Parnassus  identified  Dekker  as  the  man  who  gave  Horace 
the  purge  which  made  him  bewray  his  credit,  and  as  there- 
fore the  man  who  was  commonly  called  and  known  as 
Shake-speare,  but  the  author  of  that  drama  may  have 
erred,  and  I  preferred  to  be  guided  as  to  my  opinion  by 
the  tests  of  style. 

In  the  plays  which  I  have  examined  and  hereinbefore 
enumerated  I  am  of  the  opinion,  upon  the  facts,  that 
Michael  Drayton,  Thomas  Dekker,  Anthony  ^Monday, 
Henry  Chettle,  Thomas  Heywood,  John  Webster,  Thomas 
Middleton,  and  Henry  Porter  were  participants  in  their 
original  composition.  That  these  plays,  or  some  of  them, 
were  not  originated  by  but  were  polished  and  reconstructed 
by  Francis  Bacon  is  a  conclusion  which  also  forces  itself 
upon  my  mind,  because  first,  I  believe  that  Bacon,  if  he 
originated  the  plays  which  I  have  examined  and  com- 
mented upon,  would  have  observed  the  unities;  and 
secondly,  because  his  philosophical  views  and  his  peculiar- 
ities are  interwoven  in  some  of  them.  The  reader  has  the 
facts  before  him  on  which  to  form  his  own  conclusion. 

There  is  one  play  which  I  have  not  adverted  to,  neither 
closely  examined,  but  which  bears  so  striking  a  resem- 
blance to  that  of  Like  quits  Like,  or  Measure  for  Measure, 
that  I  think  it  should  be  credited,  at  least  as  an  original 
composition,  to  Heywood  and  Chettle.  I  allude  to  All's 
Well  that  Ends  Well.  It  is  founded  on  the  basis  or  plot  of 
substitution.  In  Measure  for  Measure,  Mariana  is  sub- 
stituted for  Isabella;  and  in  All's  Well  that  Ends  Well, 
Helena  is  substituted  for  Diana  Capilet. 


A   SHORT   SUMMING-UP.  515 

I  have  only  worked  in  a  small  part  of  the  field  of  the 
plays,  but  I  have  worked  chiefly  in  that  part  of  them 
mentioned  by  old  Meres  and  where  there  was  evidence  of 
collaboration,  so  that  in  the  future  consideration  of  such 
masterpieces  as  Romeo  and  Juliet,  Othello,  the  Merchant 
of  Venice,  the  Tempest,  and  the  other  great  plays  not 
herein  considered,  the  task  for  the  searching  student  will 
be  more  light  and  easy. 

This  imperfect  study  has  been  the  work  of  hours  stolen 
from  active  business.  At  such  times  it  has  been  a  very 
great  source  of  pleasure  to  me  to  have  been  even  for  a  few 
hours  in  company  with  the  neglected  poets  and  dramatists 
of  the  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  eras  whom  I  have 
named,  many  of  whom  are  absolutely  unknown  to  the 
mass  of  readers  of  English  history  and  literature.  Hooper 
remarks  that  Goldsmith  in  his  Citizen  of  the  World  makes 
the  Chinese  philosopher  visit  Westminster  Abbey.  "As 
we  walked  along  to  a  particular  part  of  the  Temple,  'There,' 
says  the  guide,  pointing  with  his  finger,  '  that  is  the  Poets' 
Corner;  there  you  see  the  monuments  of  Shakespeare, 
Milton,  Prior,  and  Drayton.'  '  Drayton,'  I  replied, '  I  never 
heard  of  him  before,  but  I  have  been  told  of  one  Pope, 
is  he  there?'" 

And  yet  to  my  mind  the  pilgrim  to  Warwickshire 
would  come  much  nearer  to  paying  respect  to  one  of  those 
who  formed  and  made  up  the  real  Shakespeare  by  visiting 
Hartshill  and  the  old  Grammar  School  at  Atherstone  than 
by  worshiping  at  the  false  shrine  set  up  for  pilgrims  at 
Stratford-on-Avon.  I  said  that  I  had  been  with  these 
worthies  in  those  stolen  hours.  In  utilizing  those  hours  I 
have  realized  the  truth  and  force  of  what  Robert  Elsmere 
said,  when  in  quoting  his  Mentor  Gray's  advice,  especially 


516  THE    SHAKESPEARE   TITLE. 

as  to  setting  up  a  literary  subject,  he  remarked  that ''Half 
the  day  you  will  be  king  of  the  world:  the  other  half  be 
the  slave  of  something  which  will  take  you  out  of  your 
world  into  the  general  world."  Yes,  I  have  been  with 
the  chivalrous  Sidney  in  his  philosophical  and  meta- 
physical discussions  with  Bruno  and  when  he  was  writing 
his  stern  and  stinging  admonition  to  the  love-sick  Eliza- 
beth. I  have  been  with  Drayton  at  Coventry  when  he 
visited  the  house  on  Mich  Parke  Street  where  his  fair 
enchantress,  his  loved  Idea,  was  born  and  reared;  with 
him  in  the  Peake  when  he  composed  his  odes;  with  him 
in  his  search  at  Edinburgh  for  an  honest  publisher;  with 
him  in  his  ambitious  and  unsuccessful  striving  for  prefer- 
ment from  the  disappointing  James,  and  with  him  in  his 
cosy  corner  with  the  friendly  Reynolds  when  they  dis- 
cussed the  men  and  events  of  their  generation.  I  have 
been  with  poor  Henry  Chettle  when  he  was  the  slave  of 
Henslowe,  borrowing  a  little  money  from  him  as  necessity 
urged,  and  then  hastily  turning  out  plays  for  the  fre- 
quenters of  the  theatre  to  be  credited  on  account.  I  have 
been  with  the  prose  Shakespeare,  Thomas  Heywood,  when 
he  bound  himself  under  a  penalty  of  forty  pounds  as  a 
covenant  servant  to  Philip  Henslowe  not  to  play  anywhere 
except  in  Henslowe 's  theatre  for  two  years,  and  I  have  been 
with  him  when  he  denounced  the  pedagogue  Austin  for 
publishing  as  his  own  Heywood's  translations  from  Ovid. 
I  have  been  with  Dekker  in  his  fierce  poetical  encounter 
with  and  discomfiture  of  the  critical  Jonson;  with  him  in 
the  prison  of  the  King's  Bench  when  he  wrote  letters  of 
recommendation  to  the  founder  of  Dulwich  College,  with  a 
short  gratulatory  poem  enclosed;  and  I  have  been  with 
him  in  his  fierce  denunciation  and  classification  of  the 


A    SHORT   SUMMIXG-UP.  517 

rascals  who  infested  London  and  preyed  upon  the  innocent 
and  unwar3^  I  have  been  with  rare  Ben  when  for  forty 
shilhngs  paid  by  Henslowe  he  wrote  those  magnificent 
additions  to  the  Spanish  Tragedy,  which,  in  my  judg- 
ment, are  remarkably  like  and  certainly  equal  in  power 
and  beauty  to  the  very  best  parts  of  Hamlet. 

I  have  been  with  Francis  Bacon  when  in  the  ardor  and 
sincerity  of  his  j^outh  he  inveighed  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons against  an  unjust  subsidy,  to  the  ruin  of  his  chances 
for  preferment  at  the  hands  of  Cecil  and  to  the  disgust  of 
the  despotic  Elizabeth;  and  I  have  been  with  him  when, 
as  Lord  Chancellor,  he  declared  to  the  House  of  Lords 
that  he  did  plainly  and  ingenuously  confess  that  he  was 
guilty  of  corruption  by  the  acceptance  of  many  bribes, 
sorrowfully  stating  when  asked  if  he  stood  by  his  con- 
fession, "My  Lords,  it  is  my  act,  my  hand,  mj-  heart;  I 
beseech  your  lordships  to  be  merciful  to  a  broken  reed." 

And  in  these  hours  I  gained  from  my  stolen  interviews 
with  these  poet  worthies  a  knowledge  of  the  personal 
appearance  of  the  \"irgin  Queen,  such  as  she  was  when 
Dekker  in  old  Fortmiatus  flattered  her  to  her  face  by 
calling  her  Gloriana,  and  the  Eliza  whose  land  was  Ely- 
sium. Although  the  following  description  is  not  of  her 
attire,  but  of  her  person,  it  will  give  the  reader  an  accurate 
idea  of  the  form  and  features  of  Elizabeth.  I  get  it  from 
John  Hayward,  and  he  had  good  reason  to  know  how  the 
Queen  looked: 

"She  was,"  he  says,  "a  lady  upon  whom  nature  had 
bestowed,  and  well  placed  many  of  her  fairest  favors; 
of  stature  mean,  slender,  straight,  and  admirably  com- 
posed; of  such  state  in  her  carriage,  as  every  motion  of 
her  seemed  to  bear  majesty;  her  hair  was  inclined  to  pale 


518  THE    SHAKESPEARE    TITLE. 

yellow;  her  forehead  large  and  fair,  a  seeming  set  for 
princely  grace ;  her  eyes  lively  and  sweet,  but  short-sighted ; 
her  nose  somewhat  rising  in  the  midst;  the  whole  com- 
pass of  her  countenance  somewhat  long,  but  yet  of  admira- 
ble beauty." 

It  seems  that  her  sister  Mary  also  was  short-sighted,  so 
that  she  could  not  read  or  do  anything  else  without  placing 
her  eyes  quite  close  to  the  object. 

These  actor-players  and  writers  to  whom  I  shall  now 
say  farewell — all  of  them  were  cheerful,  jolly,  companion- 
able fellows.  They  made  their  mark  in  English  literature. 
It  is  a  great  pity  that  more  is  not  known  of  them,  and 
especially  of  Drayton,  Dekker,  Heywood,  and  Webster, 
who  were  valuable  contributors  to  the  literary  glory  of 
Great  Britain. 


IXDEX. 


Aetion,  allusion  to,  107. 

Alleyn,  Edmund,   joint   o-mier  with  Henslowe  of  four  theatres,  28; 

does    not   mention    Shaksper,    46. 
Arden,    forest   of,  Drayton   bom  near,  324. 

Areopaglts  Club,  Dyer,  Greville,  Sidney,  and  Spenser  members,  213. 
AsTOX,  Sir  Walter,  helper  and  patron  of  Drayton,  113. 
Atherstoxe,  Drayton  educated  in  grammar  school  of,  324. 
Aubrey  says  Drayton's  father  was  a  butcher,  324. 
Author  of  "  Is  it  Shakespeare"  in  error  as  to  maker  of  Sonnets,  221. 
Authors,  conceahnent  of  their  names,  12. 


Bacon  and  Shakespeare,  by  William  Henr\"  Smith,  9. 

Bacon,  Delia,  a  wTiter  on  the  Baconian  philosophy  in  the  plays,  9. 

Bacon,  Francis,  did  not  vn-ite  the  Sonnets,  220;  as  a  poet,  284;  called 
himself  a  concealed  poet,  284;  Taine's  eulogj'  of  hmi,  284;  assisted 
in  the  tragedy  of  the  Misfortunes  of  Arthur,  285;  composed  Con- 
ference of  Pleasure,  285;  specimens  of  his  prose,  286;  his  part  in 
Christmas  Revels  at  Gray's  Inn,  288;  his  masque  of  the  Indian 
Prince,  289;  specimens  of  his  poetr\',  290;  what  Ben  Jonson  said 
of  him,  296;  what  Sir  Tobie  Matthew  said  of  him,  297;  Osborne's 
opinion  of  him,  298;  his  habit  as  to  dedications,  349;  what  he 
said  about  dedications,  352;  his  phrases  compared  ^ith  phrases 
in  the  dedications  of  the  poems,  352;  the  reviser  of  Troilus  and 
Cressida,  377;  Taming  of  the  Shrew  polished  by  him,  379;  his 
philosophical  precepts  in  Measure  for  Measure,  392;  what  he  said 
about  the  placing  of  Richard  the  Second,  406;  not  the  author  of 
that  play,  407;  the  Comedy  of  Errors  probably  revised  by  him, 
477;  presumption  as  to  Hamlet,  485;  as  to  traces  of  him  in 
Winter's  Tale,  490. 

Baldness,  Dekker's  poetical  praise  of,  307. 

Barnfield,  Richard,  eulogizes  Drayton,  112;  what  he  said  of  Shake- 
speare, 196. 

Bartholomew  Fair,  Jonson's  reference  to  Titus  Andronicus  and 
Pericles,  403. 

Beaumont,  Francis,  a  collaborator,  27;  tested  as  to  authorship  of 
Venus  and  Adonis,  257. 

Beecher,  Henry  Ward,  as  to  intellectual  difference  in  men,  205. 

Beroune,  meant  for  Love's  Labor's  Lost  in  Henslowe's  Diary,  43; 
Verplanck's  note  as  to,  44. 

Bible,  author  of  plays  familiar  with,  71. 

Blackstone,  Sir  William,  what  he  said  of  the  Two  Gentlemen  of 
Verona,  459. 

Boston  Library,  as  to  copy  of  North's  Plutarch,  79;  librarian's 
opinion  as  to  handwriting,  79. 

Braithwaite,  Richard,  as  to  Hej-wood,  25. 


520  INDEX. 

Bristol  Tragedy,  John  Day  sole  composer  of,  37. 

British  Museum,  reference  to  Drayton  in,  346. 

Brome,  Richard,  a  collaborator,  27. 

Brooks,  Phillips,  as  to  fathers  of  the  church,  3. 

Browx,  Armitage,  his  arrangement  of  the  Sonnets,  216. 

Brown,  Henry,  what  he  said  of  the  Sonnets,  229. 

Bruno,  Giordano,  his  acquaintance  with  Sidney,  244. 

BuLLER,  as  to  Dekker's  revision,  36. 

Bunyan,  John,  a  great  writer,  but  not  a  great  scholar,  13. 

Burns,  Robert,  a  good  poet,  but  not  a  learned  scholar,  13. 

Burr,  Willlvm  H.,  called  attention  to  Shaksper's  "WTetched  -nTiting,  6; 

offered  as  an  expert,  20;  criticises  Shaksper's  signatures,  89. 
Burton,  Robert,  as  to  poverty  of  poets,  37. 
Business  man,  word  limit  of,  175. 


Cesar's  Fall,  probably  same  as  Julius  Ctesar,  31 ;  written  by  Dray- 
ton, Monday,  Webster,  and  Middleton,  31;  entr\-  in  Henslowe's 
Dian.-  as  to,  31. 

CARDINAL  WoLSEY",  HeiiTy  Chcttle  first  began  the  play,  453. 

Ch.\lmers,  his  comments,  7. 

Chambers,  what  he  said  about  Shaksper  and  the  Sonnets,  249. 

Chapman,  George,  a  collaborator,  27;  style  tested  as  to  the  author- 
ship of  Venus  and  Adonis,  257;  finished  Marlowe's  Hero  and 
Leander,  257. 

Char.\cteristics  of  writers  shown  and  explained,  205. 

Ch.\ucer,  as  to  scholars,  61. 

Chettle,  Henry',  a  collaborator,  27;  wrote  a  part  of  Troilus  and 
Cressida,  30;  his  apologj-  for  Greene,  120;  a  competent  drama- 
tist, as  shown  by  Henslowe's  DiarA',375;  names  of  plays  written 
by,  375;  a  collaborator  with  He^vn^-ood  in  Measure  for  Measure, 
386;  what  Meres  said  of  him,  388;  Dekker's  aUusion  to  him  in 
his  dream.  389;  emploved  to  write  the  plav  of  Cardinal  Wolsev, 
453. 

Choate,  Rufus,  facsimile  of  autograph  letter,  84. 

Christm.\s  Revels  at  Grav's  Inn,  participated  in  by  Francis  Bacon, 
288. 

Circumstantlax  EAaDEXCE,  its  value,  510. 

Clarke,  Mary-  Cowden,  as  to  the  learning  of  author  of  Venus  and 
Adonis,  188. 

Clifford,  in  Gloucestershire,  Drayton's  sojourn  there,  113. 

Co.\T  of  Arms,  fraud  in  securing  it  for  Shaksper's  father,  100. 

Collaborators,  plays  in  Shaksper's  time  chiefly  written  by,  27;  sold 
ownership  of  their  plays,  34. 

Collier,  J.  Payne,  editor  of  Henslowe's  Diary,  32;  his  note  as  to 
Titus  Andronicus,  39;  as  to  King  Lear,  41;  as  to  Henrj'  the 
Fifth,  41;  as  to  Henrj-  the  Sixth,  42;  as  to  the  Taming  of  a 
Shrew,  42;  as  to  Pleasant  Willy,  103;  his  erroneous  assertion  as 
to  the  meaning  of  Daniel's  letter,  109;  his  misinterpretation  of  the 
word  "Shakescene,"  117;  his  note  about  Measure  for  Measure,  387; 
as  to  the  play  of  Julius  Csesar,  415;  as  to  Henry  the  Sixth,  422. 


INDEX.  521 

Collins,  Francis,  wTiter  of  Shaksper's  will,  60. 

Comedy  of  Errors,  anachronisms  and  incongruities  in,  473;  Dekker's 
frequent  allusions  to  the  play,  474;  his  disregard  of  the  unities 
noticed,  474;  Meres'  mention  of,  474;  apparently  a  work  of  col- 
laboration, 474;  Dekker's  jail  life  referred  to,  476;  his  use  of  law 
tenns,  476;  Henry  Porter  probably  a  collaborator,  476;  his  use 
of  proverbs,  476;  the  doggerel  lines  of  the  play,  476;  the  play 
probably  revised  by  Bacon,  477. 

Concealed  Poet,  Bacon's  admission  to  Davies,  284. 

Conference  of  Pleasure,  Bacon's  participation  in,  285. 

Cooke,  Surgeon,  his  bargain  with  Susanna  Hall,  67. 

Craik,  George  L.,  his  allusion  to  Drayton,  416. 

Crispinus,  nickname  applied  by  Jonson  to  Dekker,  321. 

Cymbeline,  Drayton  and  Dekkei*  traced  in  it,  491. 


Daniel,  Samuel,  a  collaborator,  27;  letter  to  Egerton,  110;  it  does 
not  refer  to  Shaksper,  110;  the  letter  refers  to  Drayton,  113. 

Dark-eyed  Lady  of  the  sonnets  refers  to  Penelope  Devereux,  245. 

Daughters  of  Shaksper  could  not  write,  66. 

Davies,  Rev.  Richard,  said  that  ShaLsper  died  a  Papist,  172. 

Davies,  Sir  John,  called  Drayton  the  poet  Decius,  416. 

Davison's  Poetical  Rhapsodies,  as  to  Pleasant  Willy,  105. 

Day,  John,  a  collaborator,  27;  sole  composer  of  the  Bristol  Tragedy,  37. 

Decius,  Drayton  so  called  by  Sir  John  Davies,  416. 

Dedications,  unreliability  of,  348;  in  Shaksper's  time,  349;  pub- 
lishers often  "RTote  them,  349;  examples  cited,  349;  what  Nash 
and  Bacon  said,  349;  Wither's  remarks,  349;  Dekker's  habit  as 
to,  351;  Drayton's  habit  as  to,  351;  Bacon's  habit  as  to,  352. 

Dekker,  Thomas,  eulogized  by  Whipple,  2;  his  definition  of  a  poet,  15; 
a  collaborator,  27;  revised  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  29;  wTote  with 
Henr\'  Chettle  Troilus  and  Cressida,  30;  his  praise  of  hair,  306; 
his  counter-praise  of  baldness,  307;  extract  from  Satiro-mastix, 
308;  satirized  by  Ben  Jonson,  315;  Groshart's  eulogy  of  him,  375; 
his  dream  supplemented,  389;  traced  in  Titus  Andronicus,  402; 
a  part  composer  of  Pericles,  404;  of  Henrj'  the  Sixth,  441;  of 
Richard  the  Third,  449;  and  King  John,  451;  aided  in  viTiting 
Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  459;  and  the  Falstaff  Plays,  463;  his 
characteristics.  476;  had  a  hand  in  the  Winter's  Tale,  488. 

De  Peyster,  J.  Watts,  his  pamphlet  as  to  the  Shakespeare  Myth,  6; 
his  comments  on  Hart's  statement  as  to  Shaksper,  8. 

De  Stael,  Madame,  her  praise  of  Von  Schlegel's  ability  and  accur- 
acy, 28. 

Desdemona.  allusion  to,  68. 

Devereux,  Penelope,  dark-eyed  lady  of  the  sonnets,  233;  the  Stella 
of  Sidney,  234;  wife  of  Lord  Rich  and  sister  of  Essex,  247. 

Dialect,  Drayton  familiar  with  Warwickshireisms,  346;  Morgan's 
study  of,  346. 

Discoveries,  what  Jonson  said  in  his,  197. 


522  INDEX. 

D'IsRAELi,  his  eulogy  of  Michael  Drayton,  345. 

Donnelly,  Ignatius,  a  strenuous  doubter,  10;  as  to  library,  64. 

Drayton,  Michael,  a  collaborator,  27;  wrote  part  of  Oldcastle,  29; 
wrote  Caesar's  Fall  in  collaboration,  31;  commended  contempo- 
raries, 48;  was'  commended  by  contemporaries,  49;  was  probably 
Aetion,  107;  eulogized  by  Tofte,  107;  referred  to  in  Daniel's 
letter  to  Egerton,  111;  described  as  of  civil  demeanor,  130; 
highly  praised  by  Meres,  131;  what  he  said  of  Shakespeare,  195; 
what  he  wrote  of  Sidney,  232;  probably  alluded  to  by  Jonson  as 
poet-ape,  322;  summary  of  his  life  and  work,  324;  his  habit  as  to 
dedications,  350;  traced  in  Andronicus,  399;  traced  in  Pericles, 
405;  chief  composer  of  Richard  the  Second,  408;  description  of 
his  style,  412;  resemblance  of  style  to  parts  of  Julius  Csesar,  415; 
wrong  use  of  word  "exorcist,"  420;  part  composer  of  Henry  the 
Sixth,  424;  of  Richard  the  Third,  445;  of  King  John,  450;  of  the 
Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  460;  of  the  Falstaff  plays,  466;  as  to 
Hamlet,  480;  as  to  Winter's  Tale,  487. 

Drummond,  conversations  with  Jonson,  197. 

Dryden,  John,  as  to  Troilus  and  Cressida,  374. 

DuLWiCH  College,  Henslowe's  Diary  discovered  there,  32. 

Dyer,  Sir  Edmund,  member  of  Areopagus  Club,  213;  the  man  in 
hue,  234;  friend  of  Sidney,  236;  the  Sonnets  addressed  to,  236. 

E 

Eastward  Hoe,  written  by  Jonson,  Chapman,  and  Marston,  32. 
Edward  the  Third,  profusion  of  similes  in,  362;  Halliwell-Phillips' 

allusion  to,  366. 
Edwards,  William  H.,  his  "Shaksper  not  Shakespeare,"   11;  what 

he  says  about  Shaksper 's  handwriting,  92. 
Egerton,  Sir  Thomas,  Daniel's  letter  to,  109. 
Emerson,  as  to  Shaksper's  contemporaries,  54. 
English  Traveler,  what  Hey  wood  said  in  it  as  to  plays,  31. 
Essex  Conspiracy,  reference  to  Richard  the  Second,  406. 
Eth,  frequent  use  of  as  termination  in  the  poems,  355. 
Exorcist,  a  word  wrongly  used,  420. 
Experts  in  Handwriting,  as  to  signatures,  74. 


Facsimiles    of    Shaksper's    handwriting   set    out,    75;  of    Greeley's 

letter,  82;  of  Choate's  letter,  84;  of  McDonald's  letter,  87. 
Falstaff  Plays,  the  name  "  Falstaff"  substituted  for  "  Oldcastle,"  461. 
Farmer,  Richard,  the  first  doubter,  5;  asserted  that  Shaksper  was 

not  learned,  6;  that  he  was  no  extraordinary  actor,  125. 
FiTTON,  Mrs.  Mary,  Harrison's  wild  conjecture  as  to  acquaintance 

with  Shaksper,  133, 
Fleay,  Frederic  G.,  his  conjectures,  145;  as  to  Shaksper's  padded 

biographies,  153. 
Fletcher,  John,  a  collaborator,  27;  as  to  his  never  blotting  papers,  91. 
FoRTUNATUs,  extract  from,  301. 
FuRNESS,  as  to  how  plays  were  written,  32. 


INDEX.  523 


G 


GooDERE,  Sir  Henry,  patron  of  Drayton,  113. 

Greeley,  Horace,  as  to  penmanship,  81;  facsimile  of  his  letter,  82; 

his  writing  considered,  83. 
Greene,  Robert,  his  Groat's-worth  of  Wit,  116. 
Greville,   Sir  Fulke,   member  of  Areopagus  Club,   213;  friend   of 

Sidney,  234;  pun  on  his  name,  235;  as  to  booksellers,  250. 
Groat's-worth  of  Wit,  written  by  Greene,   119;  does  not  apply  to 

Marlowe  or  Peele,  122. 
Groshart,  his  eulogy  of  Dekker,  375. 
GuNTHER  has  copy  of  folio,  79. 

H 

Hall,  Susanna,  uneducated  daughter  of  Shaksper,  66;  her  conver- 
sation with  Surgeon  Cooke.  67;  wife  of  Dr.  Hall,  67. 

Hallam  rejects  Titus  Andronicus,  398. 

Halliwell-Phillips  admits  that  Shaksper  had  no  library,  60;  as  to 
Judith's  ignorance,  66;  as  to  Shaksper's  indifference  to  literary 
proprieties,  95;  as  to  the  coat-of-arms  fraud,  100;  says  that 
Shaksper's  father  was  a  Roman  Catholic,  171. 

Hamlet,  when  the  play  appeared,  478;  the  Revenge  of  Hamlet  alluded 
to,  479;  words  of  Gabriel  Harvey,  479;  Dekker's  allusions  to,  479; 
presumptions  in  favor  of  Bacon's  authorship,  479;  Drayton's 
hand  in,  480;  test  examples,  480;  Hamlet's  soliloquy  in  original 
play,  484;  Dekker's  hand  in  the  play,  484. 

Hart,  Joseph  C,  first  public  denier  of  Shaksper's  title,  6;  what  he 
said  of  Shaksper,  6. 

Hartshill,  Drayton's  birthplace,  324. 

Harvey,  Gabriel,  corresponding  member  of  the  Areopagus  Club,  213; 
as  to  Spenser's  lost  comedies,  213;  what  he  wrote  as  to  Hamlet,  479. 

Hathaway,  Agnes,  child  of  Richard  Hathaway,  135. 

Hathaway,  Richard,  a  collaborator,  27;  wrote  part  of  Oldcastle,  29. 

Haughton,  William,  a  collaborator,  27. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  as  to  Shaksper,  15. 

Hayward,  John,  his  bequest  to  his  wife,  59. 

Heminge  and  Condell,  as  to  no  blot  on  Shaksper's  papers,  90;  omitted 
Pericles,  403. 

Henry  the  Fourth,  manuscript  of,  26;  composed  in  part  by  Drayton 
and  Dekker,  462. 

Henry  the  Fifth,  referred  to  in  Henslowe's  Diary,  41;  composed  in 
part  by  Drayton  and  Dekker,  462. 

Henry  the  Sixth,  referred  to  in  Henslowe's  Diary,  42;  Collier's 
reference  to,  422;  its  versification,  424;  Drayton's  connection 
with  it,  424;  phrases  cited,  425;  Monday  traced  in  it,  441;  Dekker 
traced  in  it,  441. 

Henry  the  Eighth,  remarks  of  commentators,  452;  what  Henslowe's 
Diary  shows,  452;  peculiarities  of  versification,  454;  Spedding's 
opinion  as  to  collaborated  authorship,  456;  Morgan's  impartial 
investigation,  456;  Warwickshire  words  in,  456;  Drayton,  how 
identified  in,  457. 


524  INDEX. 

Henslowe,  Philip,  his  Diary  shows  collaboration,  28;  joint  owner 
^\ith  Alleyn  of  four  theatres,  28;  manager  of  theatres  in  Shaksper's 
time,  28;  his  WTetched  writing,  28;  list  of  plays  he  bought,  34; 
how  he  bought  them,  35;  how  he  paid  revisers,  35. 

Henslowe's  Diary,  shows  dramatic  collaboration,  28;  its  mention  of 
Troilus  and  Cressida,  30;  of  Caesar's  Fall,  31;  Diary  discovered  at 
Dulwich  College,  32;  Shaksper  not  mentioned  in  it,  33;  Titus 
Andronicus,  how  noted  in  it,  39;  its  reference  to  King  Lear,  40; 
Henr>'  the  Fifth  noted  in  it,  41 ;  Henry  the  Sixth  and  Taming  of 
the  Shrew  referred  to  in  it,  42;  Love's  Labor's  Lost  called 
"Beroune,"  43. 

Hero  and  Leander,  extract  from,  257. 

Heyt\'ood,  Thomas,  a  prolific  dramatist,  2;  his  lives  of  the  poets 
unpublished,  25;  a  frequent  collaborator,  31;  his  remarks  in 
English  Traveler,  31;  commended  by  brother  poets,  48;  what  he 
said  of  Shake-speare,  194;  collaborator  with  Chettle  in  Measure 
for  Measure,  386;  what  Charles  Lamb  said  of  him,  388;  his 
reference  to  Richard  the  Third.  445. 

"Hierarchie    of  the  Blessed  Angells,"  reference  to,  25. 

Holmes,  Dr.,  as  to  worship  of  false  gods,  4. 

Hooper,  Richard,  incomplete  edition  of  Drayton's  works,  347. 


Illiteracy  of  Shaksper  shown  by  his  wTiting,  73. 

Ireland,  Samuel,  his  lies  in  aid  of  the  Shaksper  fraud,  57. 

Is  IT  Shakespeare?  as  to  the  complete  man,  14;  as  to  the  Sonnets,  221. 


Jealous  Comedy  may  have  been  Winter's  Tale,  486. 

Johannes  Factotum,  name  applies  to  Dekker,  124;  also  to  Mon- 
day, 127. 

John  a  Kent,  reference  to,  26. 

Johnson,  Samuel,  rejects  Titus  Andronicus,  398. 

JoNSON,  Ben,  occasionally  collaborated,  27;  wrote  Eastward  Hoe 
with  Marston  and  Chapman,  32;  collaborated  in  Sejanus,  32; 
commended  contemporaries,  49;  eulogy  of  Francis  Bacon,  296; 
his  Poetaster,  315;  called  Pericles  a  mouldy  tale,  403;  his  fling 
at  the  writer  of  Winter's  Tale,  488. 

Julius  Cesar,  Collier's  opinion  as  to  date,  415;  his  reference  to 
Drayton's  Barons'  Wars,  415;  Craik's  reference,  416;  Drayton's 
revision,  416;  Drayton's  hand  shown  in,  416;  colloquy  between 
Brutus  and  Portia,  420;  wrong  use  of  "exorcist,"  420. 

Junius,  not  knov\Ti  from  author's  statement,  12. 

Jusserand,  his  rules  as  to  Sidney's  style,  240. 


INDEX.  525 


Kemp,  William,  dedication  to  Anne  Fitton,  225. 

King  James  neglected  Drayton,  342;  eulogized  in  Henry  the  Eighth, 

452. 
King  John,  reference  to  old  play,  450;  Farmer's  opinion  as  to,  450; 

its  authors  hated  Roman  Catholicism,  450;  expressions  of  Drayton 

and  Dekker  found  in  it,  451. 
King  Lear,  referred  to  in  Henslowe's  Dian,',  40. 
KiNSAYDER,  the  nickname  of  John  Marston,  342. 
Kyd,  Thomas,  his  dedication  of  Cornelia,  349. 


Laborer,  word  limit  of  a  common,  175. 

Lady  Rich,  the  Stella  of  Sidney,  233. 

Lamb,  Charles,  as  to  Dekker's  poetic  talent,  309;  what  he  said  of 
Hey  wood,  388. 

Lardner,  as  to  Shaksper,  7. 

Learned  Writers  must  be  students,  14;  poetical  authorities  as  to 
learning,  21;  prose  authorities .  as  to,  22;  scriptural  authorities 
as  to,  24. 

Lee,  Sidney',  as  to  collaboration,  36. 

Lies  in  aid  of  Shaksper,  the  Southampton  present.  132;  the  King 
James'  letter,  132;  that  Shaksper  was  a  schoolmaster  and  la-nyer's 
clerk,  133;  that  he  had  a  liason  with  Mrs.  Fitton,  134;  that  he 
married  Richard  Hatha  way's  daughter,  134;  that  he  wrote  plays 
for  Henslowe,  135;  the  Queen's  glove  storj-,  136;  that  he  wrote 
the  John  Jordan  poetry,  137. 

Like  quits  Like,  Henslowe's  probable  designation  of  Measure  for 
Measure,  386. 

LiNTOT,  Bernard,  assertion  as  to  King  James'  letter,  132. 

Lives  of  all  the  Poets,  Heywood's,  25. 

Lodge,  Dr.,  alludes  to  Hamlet,  479. 

Logical  DmsiON  of  the  Shakespeare  question,  11. 

London  Prodigal,  not  written  by  Shaksper,  99;  not  disclaimed  by 
Shaksper,  100. 

Love's  Labor's  Lost,  referred  to  in  Diary,  43;  when  acted  at  Hens- 
lowe's theatre,  43;  called  Beroune  in  the  Dian,',  43. 

M 

Madden,  Sir  Frederic,  notice  of  John  a  Kent,  26;  analysis  of  the 

Shaksper  signatures,  76. 
Malone,  Edmund,  as  to  Pericles,  404;  as  to  Henry    the  Sixth,  423; 

as  to  Henrj'   the  Eighth,  452. 
Mankind,  credulity  of,  4. 

Mansfield,  Lord,  as  to  circumstantial  evidence,  510. 
Marlowe,  Christopher,  a  collaborator  in  plajT\Titing,  27. 
Marston,  John,  a  collaborator,  27;  tested  as  to  authorship  of  Venus 

and    Adonis,    258;    his   dedication   to    Jonson,  322;   called     Kin- 

sayder,  342. 


526  INDEX. 

Masque  of  the  Indian  Prince,  289. 

Massey,  Gerald,  his  hj-pothesis  as  to  the  Sonnets,  228. 

Matilda,  Drayton's  poem  of,  327;  his  omission  of  stanza  referring  to 
Lucrece,  343. 

Matthew,  Sir  Tobie,  calls  Bacon  a  literary  monster,  297. 

McDonald,  Joseph  E.,  facsimile  of  his  signature,  87. 

Measure  for  Measure,  originally  composed  by  Hey^'ood  and  Chettle, 
386;  difference  from  other  plays,  387;  revised  to  flatter  King 
James,  394;  what  Halliwell-Phillips  says  of  it,  394. 

Meres,  Francis,  calls  Monday  the  best  plotter,  2;  eulogizes  Drayton 
in  his  Palladis  Tamia,  131;  what  he  said  of  Shakespeare,  193; 
refers  to  Richard  the  Second,  408. 

Merrick,  Sir  Gilly,  order  to  players,  407. 

Merry  Devil  of  Edmonton,  ascribed  to  Shaksper  by  Von  Schlegel,  29; 
attributed  to  Michael  Drayton,  29. 

Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  composed  in  part  by  Drayton  and  Dekker, 
470;  who  revised  it?  473. 

Middleton,  Thomas,  a  collaborator,  27;  connected  in  the  Diary  with 
Csesar's  Fall,  31 ;  tested  as  to  authorship  of  Venus  and  Adonis,  260. 

Misfortunes  of  Arthur,  Bacon  a  collaborator  in  it,  285. 

Monday,  Anthony,  "our  best  plotter,"  2;  his  John  a  Kent  and  John 
a  Comber,  26;  a  collaborator,  27;  collaborated  in  Sir  John  Old- 
castle,  29;  connected  with  Csesar's  FaU,  31;  was  a  Johannes 
Factotum,  127;  had  "a  tiger's  heart,"  127;  called  himself  "Lazarus 
Piot,"  127;  found  in  Henrys  the  Sixth,  441. 

Montaigne  of  Florio,  facsunile  of  the  signature  in  the,  79. 

Morgan,  Appleton,  summons  to  scholars  in  his  Myth,  10;  as  to 
Shaksper's  learning,  62 ;  as  to  Shaksper's  wealth  and  his  daughters' 
ignorance,  69;  as  to  Aetion,  107;  as  to  borrowing  from  Holin- 
shed,  144;  as  to  characteristics  of  the  plays,  190;  as  to  the  name 
"Shakespeare,"  202;  shows  that  plays  are  packed  with  War- 
wickshireisms,  346;  that  the  Venus  and  Adonis  is  free  from 
them,  369;  as  to  Shaksper's  indifference,  373;  as  to  the  Bacon 
claim  to  authorship  of  Richard  the  Second,  407;  as  to  Henry 
the  Eighth,  456;  as  to  dialect,  460. 

Mother  Redcap,  a  play  bought  by  Henslowe,  35. 

Muses'  Elysium,  extracts  from  Drayton's,  333. 

N 

Nash,    Thomas,    a    collaborator,    27;  denounces  publishers,  349;  his 

remarks  as  to  Hamlet,  478. 
North's  Plutarch,  copy  in  Boston  Library,  79. 
Nymphidia,  extracts  from,  329. 


O'Connor,  William  D.,  as  to  the  Sonnets,  219. 

Oldcastle,  Sir  John,  Von  Schlegel  as  to,  28;  written  by  Drayton 

and  others,  29;  revised  by  Dekker,  29;  authorship  not  disclaimed 

by  Shaksper,  97. 
Osborne,  as  to  Francis  Bacon,  298. 


INDEX.  527 


Pandosto,  Winter's  Tale  copied  from,  486. 

Passionate  Pilgrim,  not  written  nor  claimed  by  Shaksper,  96. 

Pericles,  how  treated  by  commentators,  403;  not  in  Folio  of  1623,  403; 

not  assigned  to  Shakespeare  until  1664,  403;  Dekker  and  Drayton 

traced  in  it,  404. 
Philisides,  Sidney  was  so  called,  233. 
Pilgrim's  Progress   referred  to,  13. 
PioT,  Lazarus,  name  used  by  Anthony  Monday,  127. 
Platt-Morgan  debate,  202,  346. 
Plays,  always  called  Shakespeare  plays,   1;  as  to  friendship,  51;  as 

to  letters,  57;  as  to  libraries,  61;  as  to  education,  68;  written  by 

Protestants,  160;  contain  over  21,000  words,  175. 
Playwriters,  list  of,  204. 
Pleasant  Willy   refers  to  Sidney,  102. 
Poet-ape,  to  whom  applied,  320. 
Poetaster,  Ben  Jonson's  play  acted  in  1600,  315. 
Pope,  Alexander,  as  to  letters,  57;  as  to  Pericles,  403. 
Porter,  Henry,  a  collaborator,  27;  as  to  Comedy  of  Errors,  476. 
Portia,  allusion  to,  68. 

Protestants,  the  wTiters  of  the  plays  were,  160. 
Puritan,  Shakespeare's  name  on  title  page,  100. 

a 

Queen  Elizabeth,  the  glove  lie,  136;  description  of,  517. 
QuiNEY,  Richard,  his  letter  to  Shaksper,  56. 
Quiney,  Thomas,  husband  of  Judith  Shaksper,  152. 


Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  as  to  Sonnets,  219. 

Rankins,  William,  a  collaborator,  27. 

Reed,  Edwin,  as  to  learning  of  author  of  Venus  and  Adonis,  188. 

Return  from  Parnassus,  poets  judged  in,  310. 

Richard  Crookback,  Henslowe  paid  Ben  Jonson  for,  444. 

Richard  the  Second,  how  connected  with  Essex  Conspiracy,  406; 
what  Bacon  said  about  it,  406;  mentioned  by  Meres,  408;  Dray- 
ton  the  principal  composer,  408. 

Richard   the  Third,  facts  as  to,  444;  additions  made  in  1623,  449. 

Rising  of  Cardinal  Wolsey,  its  composers,  453;  its  expensive 
introduction,  453. 

Roman  Catholicism,  hatred  of  it  by  the  plajn^Titers,  171. 

Romance  of  Yachting,  Shaksper  fraud  first  exposed  in,  6. 

RowE,  altered  Beroune  into  Biron,  44;  his  life  of  Shaksper,  151. 

Rowland,  the  gentle  shepherd,  name  applied  to  Drayton,  107. 

Rowley,  Samuel,  a  collaborator,  27. 


528  INDEX. 

s 

Satiro-mastix,  extracts  from,  306. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  concealed  authorship  of  Wa verier,  12;  reference 
to  mass,  165. 

ScoTTOwE,  AcGCSTixE,  as  to  Shaksper's  will,  58;  as  to  the  signatures 
thereto,  93. 

Sejaxus,  the  work  of  collaborators,  32. 

Shake-scexe,  in  Greene's  book,  123. 

Shake-speare  Soxxets,  never  claimed  by  Shaksper,  214;  reputed 
authors  of.  216;  true  rule  as  to  construction,  229. 

Shakespeareax  Myth,  by  Appleton  Morgan,  10. 

Shaksper,  Johx,  fraud  as  to  coat  of  arms,  100;  presented  as  a  re- 
cusant, 171;  what  Phillips  says  as  to  his  religious  belief,  172. 

Shaksper,  Judith,  daughter  of  William  Shaksper,  66;  married  to 
Thomas  Quiney,  152;  unable  to  vrrite  her  o^-n  name,  152. 

Shaksper,  William,  his  character  and  occupation  no  bar  to  poetical 
ability,  3;  accepted  by  many  in  the  behef  that  he  had  super- 
natural powers,  17;  facsimiles  of  his  signature  from  Malone' s 
Inquirj^  18;  poetical  authorities  as  to  learning,  21;  prose  author- 
ities as  to  learning,  22;  scriptural  authorities  as  to  learning,  24; 
plays  WTitten  by  collaboration  in  his  time,  30;  his  name  not  in 
Henslowe's  Diary,  39;  commended  no  contemporary',  49;  de- 
fended as  indifferent  to  praise  or  blame,  50;  probably  had  Hens- 
lowe's business  capacity,  50;  criticised  no  one,  52;  praised  no 
one,  52;  left  no  letters,  55;  had  no  library-,  59;  gave  his  children 
no  education,  67;  never  mentioned  plays,  72;  his  poor  hand- 
^Titing  shows  his  illiteracy,  73;  his  five  signatures,  74;  utterly 
indifferent  to  literary-  proprieties,  94;  did  not  disclaim  authorship 
of  the  Passionate  Pilgrim,  96;  nor  of  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  98;  nor 
of  the  London  Prodigal,  99;  nor  of  the  Widow  of  Watling  Street, 
100;  nor  of  the  Yorkshire  Tragedy,  100;  guilty  of  deception  as 
to  coat  of  arms,  100;  was  not  Pleasant  Willy,  103;  was  not 
Aetion,  107;  not  referred  to  in  Daniel's  letter  to  Egerton,  109; 
his  real  life,  151;  Ward's  account  of  his  death,  157;  was  a  papist 
according  to  Davies,  171;  could  not  have  written  the  plays,  174; 
what  is  said  as  to  his  learning,  186. 

Shirley,  Axthoxy,  not  author  of  Shakespeare  Sonnets,  222. 

Sidxey,  Sir  Philip,  was  "Pleasant  Willy,"  105;  president  of  Areo- 
pagus Club,  213;  called  "Phihsides,"  232;  -nTOte  Shakespeare 
Sonnets,  233;  how  identified,  234;  letter  to  Queen,  237;  Jusse- 
rand's  rules,  240;  conversations  with  Bruno,  244;  eulogy  of,  251. 

Similes,  use  of  in  the  poems,  359. 

Sir  Piers  of  Extox,  reference  to,  413. 

Skottowe,  as  to  Shaksper's  -niU,  58. 

Slater,  Martix,  a  collaborator,  27. 

Smith,  William  Hexry,  his  "Bacon  and  Shakespeare,"  9. 

Smythe,  Wentworth,  a  collaborator  in  the  Rising  of  Cardinal  Wolsey, 
453. 

South.amptox,  as  to  the  Davenant  lie  about,  132. 

Speddixg,  James,  as  to  Bacon's  poetical  faculties,  284;  as  to  collabo- 
ration in  Henry  the  Eighth,  456. 


INDEX.  529 

Spenser,  Edmund,  reference  to  Pleasant  Willy,  103;  was  a  member  of 

the  Areopagus  Club,  213. 
Steevens,  George,  traced  Shaksper's  signatures.  77. 
Symonds.  as  to  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  29. 

T 

Taine,  his  analysis  of  Bacon's  poetical  talent,  284. 

Taming  of  a  Shrew,  noted  in  Henslowe's  Diarj',  379. 

Taming  of  the  Shrew,  what  Henslowe's  Diarj-  shows,  42;  changed 

as  to  characters  and  induction,  380. 
Tarquin  and  Lucrece,  not  noticed  by  Heminge  and  Condell,  260; 

revised,  with  added  notes  after  Shaksper's  death  343;  resemblance 

to  it  in  Drayton's  Barons'  Wars,  343. 
Test  of  Styles,  explanation  of,  205. 

Thackeray,  as  to  idolaters,  5;  as  to  bloody  tragedies,  397. 
Thomas  Lord  Cromwell,  ascribed  to  Shaksper  by  Schlegel,  28. 
Thorpe,  Thomas,  publisher  of  the  Shakespeare  Sonnets,  219. 
Time,  as  a  chorus,  noted  in  Henslowe's  Dian,-,  486. 
TiMON  OF  Athens,  what  Fleay  said  as  to  its  composition,  177. 
Titus  Andronicus,  how  mentioned  in  the  Dianr,  39;  rejected  by  the 

commentators,  398;  Dravton  traced  in  it,  399;  Dekker's  hand  in 

it,  402. 
Tofte,  Robert,  speaks  of  Dravton  as  bearing  the  archangel's  name, 

107. 
Troilus  and  Cressida,  entry  in  Diary  as  to,  30;  competency  of  Dek- 

ker  and  Chettle  as  writers,  374;  marks  of  Bacon  in  the  play  as 

rcAaser,  377. 
T%vo  Angry  Women  of  Abingdon,  the  work  of  Henrj'  Porter,  476. 
Tn'o  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  work  of  two  men,  458;  Dekker  traced 

in  it,  459;  Blackstone  as  to  its  faults,  459;  its  expressions  point  to 

Dekker,  459;  Drayton  had  a  hand  in  it,  460. 
Two  Harpies,  a  play  bought  by  Henslowe,  35. 
Tyler,  Thomas,  Ms  absurd  guess  as  to  the  Sonnets,  133. 


Venus  and  Adonis,  work  of  a  scholar,  254;  not  collaborated,  262; 
peculiarities  of,  355;  freedom  from  Warwickshireisms,  369. 

Verplanck,  Gulien  C,  remarks  as  to  Beroune,  44;  as  to  Daniel's 
letter,  109;  his  remarks  as  to  Titus  Adronicus,  398;  as  to  Henry 
the  Eighth,  454;  his  views  as  to  writer  of  Winter's  Tale,  487. 

VoN  Schlegel,  August  W.,  his  opinion  of  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  28. 

W 

Wadeson,  Anthony,  collaborator,  27. 

Walters,  James,  inventor  of  Shaksper's  legal  emplojanent,  147. 

Ward,  Rev.  John,  what  he  said  of  Shaksper,  157. 

Warwickshire,  Drayton  bom  in,  324. 

Warwickshireisms  in  the  Falstaflf  plays,  462. 


530  INDEX. 

Waverley,  authorship  of,  concealed,  12. 

Webb,  Judge,  as  to  conjectures  of  Shaksper  worshipers,  150;  what  he 

says  of  the  commentators,  183;  as  to  the  poems,  368. 
Webster,  John,  a  collaborator,  27;  connected  with  Caesar's  Fall,  31; 

what  he  said  of  Shakespeare,  194;  tested  as  to  Venus  and  Adonis, 

260;  collaborated  in  Richard  the  Third,  450;  traced  in  Cymbeline, 

499. 
Whateley,  Anne,  license  to  marry  Shaksper,  134. 
Whereat,  frequent  use  of,  in  Venus  and  Adonis  and  Tarquin  and 

Lucrece,  357. 
Whipple,  what  he  said  of  Dekker's  dramatic  talents,  2. 
White,  Richard  Grant,  as  a  doubter,   10;  shows  that  Sidney  was 

"  Pleasant  Willy,"  106. 
Whitney,  dedication  of  the  Choice  of  Emblems,  350. 
Widow  of  Watling  Street  not  written  by  Shaksper,  100. 
Wilson,  Robert,  was  a  collaborator  in  playwriting,  27 ;  wrote  part  of 

Oldcastle,  29. 
Winter's  Tale  not  mentioned  by  Henslowe,  486;  as  to  the  Jealous 

Comedy,  486;  as  to  traces  of  Bacon,  487;  Draytonian  expressions 

in  it,  487;  Dekker's  hand  recognized  in  it,  488;  Johnson's  fling  at 

the  writer,  488;  eulogy  on  Drayton  and  Dekker,  489. 
Wither,  what  he  said  about  publishers,  349. 
Words,  limit  as  to  their  use,  208. 

Y 

Yorkshire  Tragedy  not  written  by  Shaksper,  100. 


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